Brown Girl Dreaming
Written and Narrated By: Jacqueline Woodson
Length: 3 hrs and 55 mins
Beautiful sense of time, of place, of being scared, of being proud
I went into Brown Girl Dreaming oh so hopeful (This was, after all, tied for my Next Listen!) but oh so worried (I mean, Sandra Cisneros failed to make me proud of my heritage in her self-praised The House on Mango Street). Would Jacqueline Woodson be able to move me, enlighten me, inspire me?
First, it helps that, as she narrates this herself, she has a warm and rich voice and does NOT sound like a 6-year old (Cisneros, again!). I did have to jack up my usual x1.25 listening speed to x1.5, but once I got her narrative flow going in a way my ears found tolerable, her performance of her words was lovely. Emotionally evocative, hers was a voice that conveyed wisdom and maturity even as she looked out on her world with the eyes of a child.
Second, it’s totally AWEsome that she grew up in suuuuuch a time of great change. Cisneros had her childhood stories set in a self-absorbed bubble of time that could’ve been ANY time whereas Woodson’s stories reflect the remnants of Jim Crow South, of the Civil Rights movement in full swing with Martin Luther King, Jr. on one side, Malcolm X on the other, of Vietnam, of the Black Panthers.
And all of it is told through her story of life with her family. We get the ultra-love of her grandparents for her and her siblings, of their father’s pride (He who lives in Ohio rather than the South as “No Woodson will EVER sit in the back of the bus”), of their mother’s hope and dignity—She walks them to the back of the bus but instills in them the sense that they’re as good as anybody, and she refuuuses to let them say words like “Ain’t”… and forGET about cussing! She has the passing of her uncle and aunt, the incarceration of a favorite uncle.
I know Woodson tells her story through verse, but one only sees that in the print version. As a matter of fact, most of the complaints I found regarding this book were about how it wasn’t really poetry but was prose broken up. This is something I don’t mind, as I view breaks as pauses, as spots where reflection of meaning takes place, of spots where an emphasis is highlighted. I love free verse, and I don’t think it’s cheating at all (Can you tell I don’t have an MFA in Poetry?). It is, however, all lost in the audio production, as the verse is read simply and straight through, where richness and emphasis and power come through only via Woodson’s pacing and tone. I dunno, I liked it even tho’ I probably would’ve slowed down some if I’d read it rather than listened in.
It helps if you know even just a tad of history, as some of its beauty comes from the sense of an innocence lived even through times of great strife. We hear a young Jacqueline and her friend Maria shout Black Power, and about how you have to be prepared to die for what you believe in… even as they’d much rather live. They’re that young; they’re that real.
Mostly, this is a really wonderful book for young aspiring writers. As Jacqueline learns the letter J before anything, she sees in it great promise, a world yet to be revealed, her name soon to be spelled and lived. The way she views an empty page fills us with wonder (Which, if you’re an older writer, is odd as an empty page usually means FEAR! Must Fill! Words Aren’t Coming!). Even though her sister is such an avid reader, it’s young Jacqueline who lives and breathes words and poetry and stories. I kinda sorta remembered a younger more hopeful version of myself, where the things I relayed to others were of how I wished they’d happened rather than how they actually happened. Only Woodson STILL has that creative ability, no matter her age, no matter how very many empty pages she’s already filled thus far in her life.
I DEFinitely enjoyed this book, and as she’s only three years older than I am, I could wholly relate to the times and the chaos, of Vietnam, of a culture changing through struggle. It was a confusing time to be a kid.
But at least I never had to sit at the back of a bus.
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