Eden C. Stein
Jacqueline Woodson was born on February 12, 1963, in Ohio, and moved to Greenville, South Caroline when very young, where she grew up in her grandparents' home until she was about seven, at which time her mother took her and her brother to live in Brooklyn. She writes about living in both South Carolina and Brooklyn in Brown Girl Dreaming and most of her other books are set in Brooklyn. It will be interesting for students to explore the differences between these places, which she describes. This would also be a chance to discuss the Great Migration, the ties that many black families - including, possibly, some of the students themselves, have to the South, as well as a current trend for Black people to move back to the South. Woodson’ own picture book, This is the Rope: A Story of the Great Migration would serve the dual functions of covering subject matter as well as broadening the study of this important author. Gorgeously illustrated by James Ransome, with rich pictures of family life, This is the Rope explores the connection between Southern and Northern life for a multigenerational Black family.7 Woodson has named Virginia Hamilton and James Baldwin as two of the most influential authors to her8, so the class can explore those writers and their positions in history.
Another topic Woodson has connected to art and black history is that of freedom quilts, covered in her picture book Show Way. This picture book memoir shows the importance of quilts in assisting escaped slaves in finding the way to freedom, in addition to illustrating the skills of sewing and quilting as essential tools passed down from woman to woman in extended families.9 A contemporary connection can be made by exploring Amy Sherald’s portrait of Michelle Obama hanging in the National Portrait Gallery10, in which her dress was influenced by quilts of women in Gee’s Bend. A gorgeous nonfiction picture book, The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, by Susan Goldman Rubin, explores these historic quilters and their connection to the Civil Rights movement. Furthermore, the 1991 painting by Faith Ringold, “The Sunflower Quilting Bee at Artles,”11 is a great connection to modern art signifying the importance of quilting in the Black community as well as the legitimacy of their work as art. The production of a class quilt would be a beautiful community project as part of the culmination of this unit. Show Way, expertly illustrated by Hudson Talbott, illustrates the types of quilting blocks used in freedom quilts which can be used or modified by students for their own purposes. I love the family “tree” which is drawn as a river of quilting blocks interspersed with Jacqueline Woodson’s female ancestors. This would be a great project for students to complete regarding their own heritages.
Ms. Woodson has written 36 books, most of them for children and young adults. Her writing had been noted for the vivid description of physical settings as well as boundaries which her strong characters then cross over. All her books have poetic language, and as has been noted Brown Girl Dreaming is written in verse. Her books favor hope in the face of adversity and she has said more than once that she does not like books that do not offer hope.12 She has won the National Book Award (for Brown Girl Dreaming), the Newbery Honor Award four times, and been Young People’s Poet Laureate in 2015 - 2016 and National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature in 2018-2019. The important topics she addresses in her writing include foster care, homosexuality, drug abuse, gun violence, teenage pregnancy, race, and class differences. Notably, though she deals with these grown-up topics she stays away from illicit language giving people less of a reason to censor her books and optimize the chance they will fall into the hands of those that need them. Furthermore, it has been noted Woodson’s “sympathetic characters make the big questions more accessible for teens to examine”.13 Many readers find it impossible to read any of her books without being drawn into the story completely. As part of the unit students will be encouraged to choose another one of Woodson’s middle grade or young adult novels to connect with Brown Girl Dreaming.
In addition to writing about her growing up years, Ms. Woodson has also written openly about her adult life in “Motherhood My Way”. Here she describes her lifelong desire to be a mother, decision not to let her identity as a lesbian affect this, and search for a sperm donor - eventually settling on the husband of a close friend. She describes her joy in breastfeeding and watching her child’s first steps.14 This kind of information about an esteemed writer can be comforting to students with LGBTQ+ identities who wonder about their own futures.