Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) is Jacqueline Woodson’s celebrated coming-of-age memoir written with young readers in mind. Named one of TIME Magazine’s Best YA Books of All Time among countless other accolades, Brown Girl Dreaming recounts Woodson’s experience growing up as a young Black girl in Ohio, South Carolina, and New York during the era of Jim Crow as her sense of herself as a young woman and writer begin to take shape. While remaining grounded in her own personal and familial journey, Woodson gracefully touches upon a host of issues that continue to face the African American community, ranging from the health consequences of substandard housing to mass incarceration as they touched her own family, all written from the vantage point of herself as a child. Far from a one-note tale of woe, however, Woodson’s narrative glimmers with the abundant hope, love, and humanity that coexists with these phenomena in Woodson’s own heart, and in her circle of relatives and friends. Though her story includes themes likely to be relatable to most readers—such as feeling a lack of belonging in the place where she lives and her process of discovering her own unique brilliance in the shadow of a precocious sibling—it also highlights experiences unique to African American history, culture, and the nuances of Woodson’s own biography.

ISBN: 9780147515827