Brown Girl Dreaming Response

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Brown Girl Dreaming is an incredible memoir by author Jacqueline Woodson about her childhood, and more specifically, the dual lives she led in Greenville, South Carolina and Brooklyn, New York.  Brown Girl Dreaming tackles heavy topics such as racism in an effortless manner, relying on the author’s experiences as a young African-American girl during the civil rights movement to tell a beautifully honest story.  Despite generally disliking novels written in verse or prose, I absolutely adored Woodson’s memoir.  It was a powerful, yet charming, portrayal of the adolescent experience from a unique perspective.  The duality of Woodson’s early childhood life vividly depicts the distinctions between the south at the height of the civil rights movement and the north.  From her descriptions of life as a Jehovah’s Witness to how being raised by her grandparents shaped her, Woodson offers a look into the adolescent experience that is rarely highlighted but is often the reality for children across America.  It is so important for Woodson to tell her story because, like she expressed in her novel, without representation, “Maybe [she’d] never have believed that someone who looked like [her] could be in the pages of the book that someone who looked like [her] had a story” (228).  Not everyone will find this story as enthralling as others do, but for many children across America, this may be the first novel they see themselves in, and that’s incredibly important.


Unlike most of the novels we’ve read this semester, Brown Girl Dreaming is a positive, optimistic story in which adolescents can see that a girl who did not excel in school, who was not considered the brightest student, became a truly incredible, gifted author.  This memoir shows that grades do not determine success later in life, and it shows that with a pencil and paper, anybody can leave a mark on the world.  These are very important lessons for students of all backgrounds to learn.  Too often, the school system makes children and teenagers feel worthless for not receiving the best grades in a class.  If books like Brown Girl Dreaming were taught in schools instead, it could help inspire students to achieve their goals.  It could show them that they are capable of greatness and that there is no singular path to achieving such greatness.  Woodson is an incredible, passionate writer, and that is well conveyed within her writing.  Should schools wish to expand the representation within their taught texts and promote works that are inspirational, Brown Girl Dreaming is an excellent novel to start with.

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