Reviews
…it is the personal encounters that form the gorgeous center of this intense, moving novel...Structured as short vignettes, each reading more like prose poetry than traditional narrative, the novel unfolds as memory does, in burning flashes, thick with detail..., Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Woodson's background not only as a novelist but also as a poet, Another Brooklyn is told in spare, lyrical prose, with a surface simplicity that belies its underlying narrative strength and emotional heft. Often, in Woodson's novel, what isn't said is as essential as what is, and readers come away feeling as if they, in the process of reading the novel, are somehow partners in Woodson's project of telling her poignant and devastating story about dreams deferred, destroyed, and-in rare cases-realized., Woodson writes lyrically about what it means to be a girl in America, and what it means to be black in America. Each sentence is taut with potential energy, but the story never bursts into tragic flames; it stays strong and subtle throughout., Another Brooklyn joins the tradition of studying female friendships and the families we create when our own isn't enough, like that of Toni Morrison's Sula , Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow and Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. Woodson uses her expertise at portraying the lives of children to explore the power of memory, death and friendship.|9780062359988|, Jacqueline Woodson's spare, emphatic novel about young women growing up in 1970s Bushwick brings some of our deepest silences-about danger, loss, and black girls' coming of age-into powerful lyric speech. Another Brooklyn is heartbreaking and restorative, a gorgeous and generous paean to all we must leave behind on the path to becoming ourselves., ''…And Sister Jacqueline Woodson comes singing memory. Her words like summer lightning get caught in my throat and I draw her up from southern roots to a Brooklyn of a thousand names, where she and her three 'sisters' learn to navigate a new season. A new herstory. Everywhere I turn, my dear Sister Jacqueline, I hear your words, a wild sea pausing in the wind. And I sing…", With Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson has delivered a love letter to loss, girlhood, and home. It is a lyrical, haunting exploration of family, memory, and other ties that bind us to one another and the world., Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn is another kind of book, another kind of beautiful, a lyrical, hallucinatory, heartbreaking, and powerful novel. Every gorgeous page leads to another revelation, another poignant event or memory. This is an incredible and memorable book., With spare yet poetic writing, this long-awaited adult novel by National Book Award winner Woodson ( Brown Girl Dreaming ) is a series of vignettes narrated by August, shortly after her dad's funeral and a chance encounter with an old friend., Gorgeously written and moving, Another Brooklyn is an examination of the complexities of youth and adolescence, loss, friendship, family, race, and religion., Woodson manages to remember what cannot be documented, to suggest what cannot be said. Another Brooklyn is another name for poetry., Woodson's unsparing story of a girl becoming a woman recalls some of the genre's all-time greats: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Bluest Eye and especially, with its darkly poetic language, The House on Mango Street., [E]ntwined coming-of-age narratives-lost mothers, wounded war vets, nodding junkies, menacing streetscapes-are starkly realistic, yet brim with moments of pure poetry., Another Brooklyn is a sort of fever dream, containing both the hard truths of life and the gentle beauty of memory. The story of a young girl trying to find herself in the midst of so many conflicting influences and desires swallowed me whole. Jacqueline Woodson has such an original vision, such a singular voice. I loved this book., Woodson does for young black girls what short story master Alice Munroe does for poor rural ones: She imbues their everyday lives with significance., In Jacqueline Woodson's soaring choral poem of a novel…four young friends…navigate the perils of adolescence, mean streets, and haunted memory in 1970s Brooklyn, all while dreaming of escape., There are nothrowaway sentences in Another Brooklyn - each short, poetic line feels carefully loved and polished. The first half of this novel asks urgent questions; the second delivers uneasy, heartbreaking answers. At its core, this book is about fragility, how light shines in the broken places.