Dear Ms. Jaqueline Woodsen,
I have just recently finished reading your memoir Brown Girl Dreaming and I am in awe of your storytelling skills. The way each of your chapters is straightforward and packed with so much emotion is truly mesmerizing to me. The ability how you allow your readers to view growing up in the Civil Rights era from a child’s perspective is so unique. The way you chose to write in free verse made this book stand out from other memoirs I have read. I am curious as to why you chose to write this book this way. Was it because you wanted it to stand out from other memoirs? Did you feel that poems were the most effective way to tell snippets of your childhood? I thoroughly enjoyed the way you wrote Brown Girl Dreaming and found it to be so inspiring.
Your book was also such a relatable piece of art for me. It truly is something that helped me cope and heal wounds from my past. The chapters about having divorced parents, moving states, and having to deal with your grandpa's passing are all incidences that have happened to me as well. My parents divorced when I was five years old. At the time we were living in Colorado, but my mother felt the need to go back to her hometown in Prior Lake Minnesota. She knew she needed extra help with raising my brothers and me, so we moved in with my grandma for a while. During this time my mother was working two jobs in order to be able to save up enough money to buy a house of her own. Even though I was young I understood that my mom needed to work what seemed like endless hours in order to be able to provide for her children. While living with my grandma, who I call Gigi, we got to form and create a special bond. In Brown Girl Dreaming you have a chapter titled What’s left behind that truly resonated with me. In this chapter, you explain, in great detail, how your Grandmother informs you of the similarities that you share with daddy Gunnar. On page 289 as you two look at a picture of him together you mention that your grandma calls you and daddy Gunnar “two peas in a pod". During my childhood years, while I lived with my Gigi, we would often look at pictures of my grandfather who had died when I was four years old. To this day she reminds me of how my grandpa, and I share “the most beautiful brown eyes and laugh” that we are in fact two peas in a pod just how you and daddy Gunnar were. This similarity that you and I share truly hit home to me. Dealing with the loss of someone close is never easy but our grandmas helped to remind us that while they may be gone physically, they will forever remain unforgotten in our hearts.
To me, this book displayed the idea that anyone, no matter their race, can dream big dreams. You chose to focus on the good in your life rather than dwell on the bad and that is so powerful. Throughout this book, you never place blame or bias and I found that to be captivating. No matter how much pain the world gives you never give the pain back to anyone. Thank you for being brave enough to write about your own childhood experiences and allowing them to be put on display for the world to see. You are truly an inspirational hero and I hope you know that.
Sincerely,
Maddie Kobernick
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