This week I read "brown girl dreaming" - Jacqueline Woodson's memoir of growing up during the 1960s and 1970s, both in the American south and north. This astonishing work of literature is written in free verse, and paints vivid pictures of life, homes, families, streets, triumphs, trials, joys, pains, and memories.
It is one person's story, one person's experience, one person's memory, one person's voice. Jacquline makes no apology for the fact that this memoir is simply her uncovering and awakening to herself. But it is set against the larger American tale of racial tensions and truths. In reading this, I once again was able to step into someone else's world and begin to understand the nuances of experiences other than my own.
Stories are what move us into the realm of understanding. It is easy to dismiss the experience of others when we listen to it from a distance; to vague news reports and numbers that overwhelm. But when you come in beside someone and listen to their story, a bridge is crossed that makes it impossible to ignore. Reading "brown girl dreaming" was a bridge for me to a time and place and space to which I needed to journey.
"Our feet are beginning to belong
in two different worlds - Greenville
and New York. We don't know how to come
home
and leave
home
behind us."
"If someone had been fussing with me
to read like my sister, I might have missed
the picture book filled with brown people, more
brown people than I'd ever seen
in a book before.
If someone had taken
that book out of my hand
said, You're too old for this
maybe
I'd never have believed
that someone who looked like me
could be in the pages of the book
that someone who looked like me
had a story."
"Even though the laws have changed
my grandmother still takes us
to the back of the bus when we go downtown
in the rain. It's easier, my grandmother says,
than having white folks look at me like I'm dirt.
I look around and see the ones
who walk straight to the back. See
the ones who take a seat up front, daring
anyone to make them move. And know
this is who I want to be. Not scared
like that. Brave
like that.
Still, my grandmother takes my hand downtown
pulls me right past the restaurants that have to let us sit
wherever we want now. No need in making trouble,
she says. You all go back to New York City but
I have to live here."
"Each day a new world
opens itself up to you. And all the worlds you are -
Ohio and Greenville
Woodson and Irby
Gunnar's child and Jack's daughter
Jehovah's Witness and nonbeliever
listener and writer
Jackie and Jacqueline-
gather into one world
called You
where You decide
what each world
and each story
and each ending
will finally be."
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