Review by New York Times Review
I WAS 14 YEARS OLD when I first read Nikki Giovanni's masterly collection of poetry, "Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day." As with most everything I read between the ages of 12 and 16, there was so much I didn't understand. I was the first-generation daughter of people who came from a small country, a country so small that I had yet to meet someone from there who could not connect the dots to my family in five seconds flat. I didn't know a thing about Jim Crow, the American South, soul food or classic rhythm and blues. Yet like most kids who love to read, I understood the feeling behind the words, if not all of the meaning of the words. So when Giovanni wrote: We are consumed by people who sing the same old song STAY: as sweet as you are in my corner Or perhaps just a little bit longer But whatever you do don't change baby baby don't change I didn't really know what old song she was referring to, but the rhythm of her words drew me in. And because I was a teenage girl, I was fairly confident I knew exactly what Giovanni meant when she wrote: If loneliness were a grape the wine would be vintage If it were a wood the furniture would be mahogany But since it is life it is Cotton Candy on a rainy day The sweet soft essence of possibility Never quite maturing I thought of Nikki Giovanni and the teenage girl I was, almost constantly, as I read Jacqueline Woodson's wonderful memoir in verse, "Brown Girl Dreaming," because I suspect this book will be to a generation of girls what Giovanni's book was to mine: a history lesson, a mash note passed in class, a book to read burrowed underneath the bed covers and a life raft during long car rides when you want to float far from wherever you are, and wherever you're going, toward the person you feel destined to be. I will say first that the title seems to confine the book in too narrow a box. I wondered if the author and publishers, by calling the book "Brown Girl Dreaming," were limiting its audience or, at the very least, the audience of girls who would pick it up right away. Why not call it "Home Girl Dreaming" or "Tall Girl Dreaming" or even just "Girl Dreaming"? I believe strongly in the words of that most expert of brown girl writers, Lorraine Hansberry, who said, "To create the universal, you must pay very great attention to the specific." But I worry that such a specific title might lead a reader - especially a teenage reader - to miss what a big tent Woodson is pitching. Will girls who aren't brown know, without prompting, that they too are invited to this party? We take our food out to her stoop just as the grown-ups start dancing merengue, the women lifting their long dresses to show off their fast-moving feet, the men clapping and yelling, Baila! Baila! until the living room floor disappears. You can read "Brown Girl Dreaming" in one sitting, but it is as rich a spread as the potluck table at a family reunion. Sure, you can plow through the pages, grabbing everything you can in one go, like piling a plate high with fried chicken and ribs, potato salad and corn bread. And yes, it's entirely possible to hold that plate with one hand while balancing a bowl of gumbo and a cup of sweet tea with the other. But since the food isn't going anywhere, you'll make out just as well, maybe even a little better, if you pace yourself. If you know Woodson's work (which includes "Hush" and "This Is the Rope: A Story From the Great Migration"), read for her life story first: Good enough name for me, my father said the day I was born. Don't see why she can't have it, too. But the women said no. My mother first. Then each aunt, pulling my pink blanket back patting the crop of thick curls lugging at my new toes touching my cheeks. We won't have a girl named Jack, my mother said. For young readers in the process of discovering what Anna Julia Cooper so beautifully called "when and where I enter," there are poems galore. Poems about sibling rivalry, poems about parents who don't take no mess, poems about grown-ups who make a mess of things and, most poignantly, poems about the friends who help see you through. Such as this one, in "Maria." Late August now home from Greenville and ready for what the last of the summer brings me. All the dreams this city holds right outside -just step through the door and walk two doors down to where my new best friend, Maria, lives. Every morning, I call up to her window, Come outside or she rings our bell, Come outside. Her hair is crazily curling down past her back, the Spanish she speaks like a song I am learning to sing. Mi amiga, Maria. Maria, my friend. The short poems are a gift too and made me think of April when the Academy of American Poets leads a nationwide celebration called Poem in Your Pocket Day. There are plenty of candidates for poems you can keep in your pocket in "Brown Girl Dreaming." I especially loved the series of numbered short poems, threaded throughout the book, called "How to Listen." This is No. 8: Do you remember...? someone's always asking and someone else, always does. In "Possession," A.S. Byatt wrote about how we are transformed by the act of memorizing poetry "by heart...as though poems were stored in the bloodstream." Jacqueline Woodson's writing can seem so spare, so effortless, that it is easy to overlook the wonder and magic of her words. The triumph of "Brown Girl Dreaming" is not just in how well Woodson tells us the story of her life, but in how elegantly she writes words that make us want to hold those carefully crafted poems close, apply them to our lives, reach into the mirror she holds up and make the words and the worlds she explores our own. This is a book full of poems that cry out to be learned by heart. These are poems that will, for years to come, be stored in our bloodstream. VERONICA CHAMBERS is a co-author, with Marcus Samuelsson, of "Yes, Chef."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [September 7, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* What is this book about? In an appended author's note, Woodson says it best: my past, my people, my memories, my story. The resulting memoir in verse is a marvel, as it turns deeply felt remembrances of Woodson's preadolescent life into art, through memories of her homes in Ohio, South Carolina, and, finally, New York City, and of her friends and family. Small things ice cream from the candy store, her grandfather's garden, fireflies in jelly jars become large as she recalls them and translates them into words. She gives context to her life as she writes about racial discrimination, the civil rights movement, and, later, Black Power. But her focus is always on her family. Her earliest years are spent in Ohio, but after her parents separate, her mother moves her children to South Carolina to live with Woodson's beloved grandparents, and then to New York City, a place, Woodson recalls, of gray rock, cold and treeless as a bad dream. But in time it, too, becomes home; she makes a best friend, Maria, and begins to dream of becoming a writer when she gets her first composition notebook and then discovers she has a talent for telling stories. Her mother cautions her not to write about her family, but, happily, many years later she has and the result is both elegant and eloquent, a haunting book about memory that is itself altogether memorable.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Written in verse, Woodson's collection of childhood memories provides insight into the Newbery Honor author's perspective of America, "a country caught/ between Black and White," during the turbulent 1960s. Jacqueline was born in Ohio, but spent much of her early years with her grandparents in South Carolina, where she learned about segregation and was made to follow the strict rules of Jehovah's Witnesses, her grandmother's religion. Wrapped in the cocoon of family love and appreciative of the beauty around her, Jacqueline experiences joy and the security of home. Her move to Brooklyn leads to additional freedoms, but also a sense of loss: "Who could love/ this place-where/ no pine trees grow, no porch swings move/ with the weight of/ your grandmother on them." The writer's passion for stories and storytelling permeates the memoir, explicitly addressed in her early attempts to write books and implicitly conveyed through her sharp images and poignant observations seen through the eyes of a child. Woodson's ability to listen and glean meaning from what she hears lead to an astute understanding of her surroundings, friends, and family. Ages 10-up. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Free verse is an effective writing style for describing dreams. Woodson's text is particularly compelling when detailing the small moments of life, such as the "Saturday night smells of biscuits and burning hair" or bemoaning the "hair ribbons that anchor (her) to childhood." And while poetry is sometimes difficult to follow on audio, this author is a masterful narrator. The sounds of the words and the rhythm expressed by her thoughtful intonation, careful pacing, and deliberate emphasis make clear the poetic form: "a country caught" (sharp c's and t, pause) "between black and white." Themes include the iconic search for identity in changing times: for example, Woodson's Southern cousins say she speaks too quickly, while in New York, "coming back home isn't really coming back home at all." Yet throughout her interestingly complicated childhood, young Jackie tells stories until she grows to understand that "stories are like air to me and I know now that words are.my brilliance." A personal memoir and a child's eye view of the nascent civil rights movement, this work confirms Woodson's brilliance as a writer for children and for adults, too.-Toby Rajput, National Louis University, Skokie, IL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
In this memoir in verse, Woodson offers an intimate, immediate portrait of her unfolding childhood, haunted by specters of discrimination and cheered by the comfort of family. The author's own narration, with the resonance of a storyteller, is plainly conversational. Her easy cadence leaves phrases open, ready to accept the next line, establishing a comfortable, familiar rhythm perfectly suited to the natural verse. Never calling attention to itself, Woodson's honest reading, with nuanced pauses, inflections, and occasional whispers, invests the emotional impact in service to the poetry, where it belongs. The memoir is already receiving lots of attention, and this audio production offers another entry point into a compelling, transformative life story. thom barthelmess (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A multiaward-winning author recalls her childhood and the joy of becoming a writer.Writing in free verse, Woodson starts with her 1963 birth in Ohio during the civil rights movement, when America is "a country caught / / between Black and White." But while evoking names such as Malcolm, Martin, James, Rosa and Ruby, her story is also one of family: her father's people in Ohio and her mother's people in South Carolina. Moving south to live with her maternal grandmother, she is in a world of sweet peas and collards, getting her hair straightened and avoiding segregated stores with her grandmother. As the writer inside slowly grows, she listens to family stories and fills her days and evenings as a Jehovah's Witness, activities that continue after a move to Brooklyn to reunite with her mother. The gift of a composition notebook, the experience of reading John Steptoe's Stevie and Langston Hughes' poetry, and seeing letters turn into words and words into thoughts all reinforce her conviction that "[W]ords are my brilliance." Woodson cherishes her memories and shares them with a graceful lyricism; her lovingly wrought vignettes of country and city streets will linger long after the page is turned.For every dreaming girl (and boy) with a pencil in hand (or keyboard) and a story to share. (Memoir/poetry. 8-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
