Brown Girl Dreaming (racism, civil rights, and the young mind)

By -
Brown Girl Dreaming, a narrative told in verse by Jacqueline Woodson, follows an African American girl and her family's lives living in the 1960's and1970's in Brooklyn and South Carolina. The 1960's is when the Civil Rights Movement was at its height. Therefore, it becomes a prominent theme with Jackie being African American and living in the south for a good part of her early life. Jacqueline Woodson is able to gives us narrative of the Civil Rights Movement from a point of view rarely seen, that being an African American child in South Carolina.
Her telling of events that she went through displaying racism has an interesting dichotomy that only a child could have at the time. The dichotomy was a mix of confusion on why they are being treated differently while at the same time having the understanding of the danger that her family and her experience. The example I think demonstrates this dichotomy best would be from the poem “greenville, south carolina, 1963.” An excerpt reads as follows,
On the bus, my mother moves with us to the back.
                                    It’s 1963
                                   in South Carolina.
                                  Too dangerous to sit closer to the front
                                          and dare the driver.  (Woodson, pg. 30)
This excerpt from the poem is something very real, raw, and emotional. It baffles me that this was less than sixty years ago. This passage shows that from a child Jackie understood from an incredibly young age that her life was valued less than the lives of the white people by society. As a child she was able to understand this but there was no reason to why. She never knew why, but she was told by society that having dark skin makes you less important and not to challenge the status quo because it could be very dangerous for herself and her family. I am very glad that I was able to gain a little perspective and see how it was to live in Greenville in the 1960s as a black woman. I am also incredibly glad that she was able to find inspiration and a dream after seeing a picture of a girl that looked like her in the library. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing Pains - The Symbolism of the Tree in Speak

By -
I have felt the paralyzing pain of internal disease. The kind of trauma that causes your mouth to curl in and swallow you whole. I, like so many other women, are walking the halls in Melinda’s shoes in “Speak.” I thought Laurie Anderson did a phenomenal job of twisting all of the tribulations a high school girl goes through, into the tree that Melinda is. Whether we’re as strong as an oak or weak as a bush, we have all gone through the disease that strikes Melinda from the inside out. Melinda is like a half-dead tree. Some parts of her strive to blossom and create beauty. Other parts are broken and diseased. Like a dead tree, Melinda needs to save herself and “cut off the damage, [so it] is possible for the tree to grow again” (187). The symbolism of a tree is significant in “Speak.” Trees reflect her growing process. In the beginning, Melinda is a sick and lifeless tree. Her view is negative and dark. She’s so far past repair, bursts of sunlight do her no good. Sunlight would be pe
Read more

How Starr Goes from Acting to Embracing in The Hate U Give

By -
In The Hate U Give, Starr Carter is caught between two worlds. She lives in a predominantly black neighborhood, but her father sends her and her brothers to a private school where she is surrounded by white people. She talks about acting differently depending on what group she is around, which can create some identity problems. She says on page 11, "Funny how it works with white kids though. It's dope to be black until it's hard to be black." When at Williamson, she sees white kids that think it's cool to engage in black culture, but she knows they don't understand what she goes through in her Garden Heights community. She witnessed her friend Natasha's death when she was 10 years old, and she sees gang activity in her community all the time. When she is among her black friends, like at the party, they tease her for hanging out with the white kids. This reminds me of a Drake song where he says, "I used to get teased for being black, and now I'm
Read more

Postmodernism in Curious Incident

By -
Before I start writing, I first want to acknowledge that I just really loved this book! It seemed like a lot of the class had trouble enjoying or appreciating the novel because it's so different stylistically, which is understandable, but all of those unique elements helped make the novel more authentic. The main topic I want to focus on (also what I'm writing my paper on) is how a lot of postmodernist elements were used in the novel to make Christopher come to life. While obviously not every postmodern novel is about an autistic kid, I think Haddon really used a lot of these elements to his advantage and they ended up working out really well to characterize Christopher. One of the major postmodern elements which helps this book really craft an authentic portrayal of autism is the fact that it's metafictive. Basically, this means it's a "story within a story." Readers would be extremely limited just reading the parts of the novel which are meant to be C
Read more