"Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson Analysis Essay Example

Memories today are cherished for personal reasons; to show the importance it holds and the preservation of a loved one, hero or an occasion celebrated with family and friends. Memories can also have a lesson that teaches us about the history of our ancestors, giving us clarity of why things are the way they are around us.  In Jacqueline Woodson's memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, she focuses her memories on how she was brought up and how each memory led to who she is today.  Woodson's relationship with her memories can be biased when being told by someone new. Actively retelling life moments help shares the importance of these memories we hold within from life experiences, pictures, and stories.  As Woodson retells her childhood, she uses specific words and details that help her profess her memories and how each one holds an essential element in her life as they help her decide her worldview. 

Woodson begins the day she was born, February 12th, 1963 (12). 

 "…. I am born in Ohio.

But the stories of South Carolina already run like rivers through my veins" (13).

My mother said

"I came in the late afternoon /

Two days after I turned twenty-two."(26).

My father says

"When I saw you, I said,

She's the unlucky one

come out looking just like her daddy."(27).

She uses the memories of her mother and father as she was too young to remember such an occasion, as each person's views differed, confusing Jacqueline's selfhood during her younger years.  She describes her birth certificate, noting that she and her parents are "Negro."(14).

"I am born brown-skinned,

black-haired and wide-eyed.

I am born Negro and Colored there." (14).

She was born during the civil rights movement when Black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr marched to end racism. During this time, people referred to the states as "North or South." She was born in the North, Ohio, where her mother and father resided. But each time her parents split, Jacqueline, mama, and her siblings moved to Greenville, South Carolina, with her Grandparents, Maryann and Gunner.  When Jacqueline asked her mother if she liked where they lived, she said that the South was pleasant but did not feel like home.  Home to momma was in the North.

When her parents split for good, Jacqueline and her siblings stayed in the South with her grandparents while their mother went up North. When it happened, Jaqueline was a young girl; she grew up calling Grandpa Gunner daddy as she spent so much time with him. She describes her grandfather, who works in the garden as he did in slavery, cotton picking.  "My grandmother tells us

it's the way of the South.  Colored folks used to stay

where they were told that they belonged.  But

times are changing.

And people are itching to go where they want." (56-57).

The South was one of the last states desegregated, while things were possible for African Americans in the North.  Her father would say,

"You can keep your South,

the way they treated us down there,

I got mama out as quick as I could.

Brought her right up here to Ohio." (29).

He also claimed his family would never live in South Carolina again, but they did.  Moving up North is where he believed what saved him and his family from having to tell every white man "Yes sir" or "no sir."(29).  Most importantly, moving up North offered more opportunities to be free.  For Jacqueline, Ohio did not feel like home; she felt at home with Grandma Maryann and Grandpa Gunner in the South. 

Her memories address home and family, but she also mentions her memories of religion.  She grew up Jehovah's witness while living in the South with her Grandparents; she recalls standing outside her classroom with the other "witnesses" while their classmates recited the Pledge of Allegiance. (146-147).  When she moves home with mama in New York, Jacqueline learns of other religions from children her age and soon realizes she is not a true believer.  It gave Jacqueline a sense of decision, as she followed her grandma Maryann’s religion for years which was based on someone else's belief instead of her own.  She also struggled with reading as a young child, but she loved stories: "The Selfish Giant" (219-220), which she was able to recite from memory.  She even authored a book: the first book,

" Seven of them,

haikus mostly, but rhyming ones, too. /

Butterflies by Jacqueline Woodson on the front."(224)

She learned that words made a difference:

"I want to write this down, that the revolution is like

a merry-go-round, history being made

somewhere.  And maybe for a short time,

we're part of that history.  And then the ride stops,

and our turn is over." (272). 

Words to Jacqueline were like a breath of fresh air.  Before she could even spell a word, she was eager to draft the stories that poured out of her mouth. (194).  Her memories share how the North and South differed, yet each became her home in the end but with a different meaning: The South was a sense of belonging to Jacqueline; it taught her about family, love, and community. The North offered more opportunities to African Americans, which gave Jacqueline the feeling of acceptance and the education she was eager to learn.

Jacqueline Woodson, a brown girl who dreams, grew up in New York, South Carolina, and Ohio.  A girl who loved reading and writing experienced racism, death, heartache, religion, learning, and family.  A memoir she writes in verse to remember, encourage, and teach us how we should embrace what we experience and how to honor our history that will forever intertwine within us. In conclusion, Jacqueline Woodson connects her memories of personal and family history and the history of African Americans during her early years of childhood. She shows us how memories teach us who we are and how we become who we are as we age with time, how our history holds emotions that live through us, and made-up stories give us a sense of imagination or hidden truth. Most importantly, she teaches us how to listen: How to listen #10

"Write down what I think

I know.  The knowing will come.

Just keep listening..."(274)

Works Cited

Woodson, Jacqueline, Brown Girl Dreaming.  eBook.  Penguin Group, 2014.  Lowe's Grove Navigator.  http://lgnavigators.weebly.com/uploads/5/8/5/2/58521739/brown_girl_dreaming.pdfs/5/8/5/2/58521739/brown_girl_dreaming.p