#2: Brown Girl Dreaming
Even the silencehas a story to tell you.Listen. Just listen.
Brown Girl Dreaming
Jacqueline Woodson
Year Published: 2014
Pages: 349
Genres: Middle-grade memoir, poetry
Topics: Growing up, family, moving, race, civil rights movement, writing
Recognition:
Summary
Jacqueline Woodson's memoir in verse about her life as a young girl growing up in the 1960s and '70s begins with her birth on February 12, 1963, in Columbus, Ohio. After a brief, tumultuous marriage, her parents divorce and her mother takes baby Jacqueline and her older brother and sister to live with their grandparents in Greenville, South Carolina, in the late Jim Crow era.
Jacqueline's earliest memories happen here, in her grandparents' house in Nicholtown, the segregated Black neighborhood in Greenville. The civil rights movement, however, is only a distant background for the young Jacqueline, whose memories focus more strongly on playing in South Carolina's red dirt and getting lemon chiffon ice cream with her grandfather.
In the late 1960s, Jacqueline's mother moves the family again, this time to Brooklyn in New York. While Jacqueline first feels split between two worlds, the North and the South, it's in Brooklyn where she learns to love writing, where a teacher first calls her "a writer," and where she becomes more aware of the racial struggles the whole country is going through.
Brown Girl Dreaming and Me
I wanted to read Brown Girl Dreaming because it's quickly become a mainstay in late elementary and middle school curricula over the last decade.
Woodson has said that she chose to write Brown Girl Dreaming as a collection of poems to mimic the nature of memory, which happens in images, vignettes, feelings, and snatches of conversation rather than as one single story. This disconnected narrative is one of this book's strengths. Reading it is both a powerful and leisurely experience, since each individual poem is a precise memory but the whole collection can be enjoyed at any pace. While I never felt that I couldn't put it down, once I started reading, I was quickly charmed and moved by Woodson's descriptions, and especially by her clear love and affection for the people in her life.
Teaching Considerations
Middle Grade: Brown Girl Dreaming is a middle-grade book, although it has admirers of many ages. The subject matter and difficulty of the text probably make it ideal for 5th or 6th graders, although 7th graders and older readers could easily enjoy it too.
Whole Group or Small Group: I think I would prefer Brown Girl Dreaming as a small-group or individual read, but it could definitely be (and is frequently) taught as a whole-group read. I just think the entire book's pace is a little slower than I would want in a whole group read to keep an entire class engaged, but individual poems or sections could easily be taught in a whole-group unit.
Poetry: Woodson's poetry in Brown Girl Dreaming is beautiful but accessible, with a strong personal focus and powerful imagery. The poems are arranged chronologically, although they don't necessarily form a connected narrative, so the book can easily be taught as a whole or in sections.
Memories and Experiences: There is very little overarching story structure to Brown Girl Dreaming, but most of the poems are carefully constructed images and memories of the author's youth. Almost any of them could be used as a mentor text for students to construct their own poems or narratives about a powerful memory from their own lives.
Sensitive Content: While Brown Girl Dreaming has little overtly controversial content, it does discuss matters of race and religion, as well as touch on death and developmental disability.
Read Aloud Passages
- february 12, 1963 (pp. 1-2)
- This poem introduces the author/narrator and lays the historical and cultural backdrop for the entire book. This is a good summary of the author's view of herself and the time in which the memoir takes place.
- greenville, south carolina, 1963 (pp. 30-31)
- Jacqueline's mother takes the children on a bus in South Carolina, where they must adjust to new racist rules and attitudes in the late Jim Crow South. A good read-aloud that directly addresses questions of race that aren't always at the forefront of the book.
- writing #2 (pp. 221-222)
- Jacqueline explores her love of writing in the context of songs she hears on the radio and her own struggles to read. A good poem for those interested in writing or who struggle with reading.
- fate & faith & reasons (pp. 293-294)
- This poem covers a lot in just two pages. Jacqueline asks her mother what she believes in, and the following lines touch on religion, segregation, fate, nature, and family.
- each world (pp. 317-318)
- The final poem in the main text is a direct address to the reader, summarizing some of Jacqueline's influences and identities and inviting the reader to become who they want to be.
Liked Brown Girl Dreaming? Try These:
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros (1984)
- Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (2007)
- The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (2018)
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