Brown Girl Dreaming {Page-Turner}

This could be a song, or a long poem...

In both cases flowing and rich music would accompany the novel well: deep, soulful, Southern music and raucous voices would be chanting the life of this alert and talented "Brown girl", Jacqueline Woodson. She has a dream. She has many dreams.

She may be young, but her mind and eyes are wide open to the cruelty and sorrows of the world, including her family situation in a time where African Americans were facing the ordeal of segregation in all its savage idiocy. We're in the 1960s and the full weight of racial tension and family disruption far from bringing the little girl's spirit down lifts her up in search of understanding, strength and clarity. 

She may not be as sharp and successful as her sister, Dell, but she grasps the world of adults around her with typical child acumen and manages to voice her dreams through the power of her written words, no matter how hard they are for her to reach! She portrays the characters she meets along the way such as her uncle, her best friend's mother... Most of them are imperfect, fragile, shifting - human - while some of them are there to last and help her find her bearings while turmoil inhabits the country: her strong mother and her grand-parents are among the most powerful and touching characters vividly depicted. 

Her dream is to learn who she is - her name! - and to learn how to read and write as a means of finding and defining her identity and becoming part of History.

An anecdote: it comes as no surprise to me that I have first and happily found out about this poetic novel via a delicate blog I will shortly tell you more about in my next Top Blogs series episode. 

Until then, I leave you with the echo of the following excerpt, straight from Jacqueline's (Woodson) soul, sensible, touching and clairvoyant as she is:

Credits: 

1) Designerspics

2) Unsplash (edited)