Jacqueline Woodson

A Novel

Another Brooklyn

Ryan 

2.5 stars

i think the storyline was just mediocre, but the writing was simple, yet outstanding. more to come.

Melissa Palmer

Book #51 Read in 2016
Another Brookyn by Jacqueline Woodson

I love Woodson's young adult books. This is an adult book and it does not disappoint. Told in poignant style, this book details a brother and sister growing up in Brooklyn, with their father, in a mostly black neighborhood and the trials of puberty, poverty and longing for their mother. This was a good, quick read. Woodson's writing is magically powerful. I received a copy of this book from Amazon Vine in exchange for a honest review.

Alisha 

I know I'll end up reading this book again & again. Written in verse, this novel sings to you & I breezed through it in a day. Memory. Grief. Girlhood. Home. So many themes explored in such a short novel. Not one wasted sentence. Beautiful.

Stark Koenig

Woodson paints a portrait of a city that is simultaneously brutally dangerous and starkly beautiful. The book is both a love letter to black girlhood and an examination of memory and loss. Devastating, but gorgeous.

Jeff Brown 

It's probably not good to review your reviews and ratings. But "Red To The Bone" is a much better book than this one, even though my ratings for both say "4". I would give "Red" an amended 4.5 stars. I would give "Brooklyn" a strong 3.75.

I had trouble, I admit, connecting to the group of very young black girls in Brooklyn. "Red" involved not only a young woman, but generations of a family. But as "Brooklyn" advanced (and the girls advanced in years), the early sections started coming together and the book finished VERY strong.

If you connect easily with the girls early in the book, then this is a BIG recommendation. If you struggled as I did early, I still recommend the book -- it is very good.

When I started reading more female authors over the last year, I had hoped to find a new author that drew me into the stories -- I believe I have found her. And she has a lot of books I need to catch up on. :D

Jessica Nottingham

This isn't just a novel, it's a love letter to girlhood. Specifically, it's a gorgeously crafted, prose style, love letter to growing up as a black girl in 1970's Brooklyn. Anyone who has read Jacqueline Woodson's writing, knows that she has a knack for transporting her readers straight to wherever her story is set. In this case, that's even truer than before. Through August's memories, through the snippets that she deigns to share with us, the reader is transported straight back to her childhood in a place that wasn't quite home. A place where the mean streets chewed people up, and spit them back out. Unfortunately, not always whole. You can feel this place, this time, pulsing on the page. Another Brooklyn is stunning, and even that compliment is an understatement.

August allows the reader to follow her back to a time and place where friendship was the only thing keeping her whole. Woodson manages to bring these four girls, and their separate home situations, to life in vivid color. I didn't think it was possible to accomplish that in such a short amount of pages. I was wrong. Each one of these girls is hiding their true self from the others, in the hope that it will allow them to escape into one another for a while. Hoping it will allow them to fade into a group that provides its own kind of family. As those true selves came to light, and I was treated to a glimpse at why these girls needed one another so deeply, my heart broke into pieces. The whole world, at least as they knew it, was against them. Their bravery, as thin a shield as it may have been, was commendable.

If I had one small complaint, it would be that this book simply isn't long enough. I know that seems trivial, since Woodson is clearly capable of weaving a perfect story in this small amount of pages. However I missed these girls after the story was over. I wanted to hear more about their pasts. To live their stories. To be able to fully mourn the ones who didn't make it. I'd have read 400 pages of this, and not even batted an eyelash. That's the kind of writer that Jacqueline Woodson is, and why you should pay attention. So yes, in case it wasn't obvious, you should read this. It absolutely deserves your time.

Teeeeeesha

Melissa Railey

lexie

Valeria M

Raven K

Jess Smith

Sarah

A Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award New York Times Bestseller The acclaimed New York Times bestselling and National Book Award–winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming delivers her first adult novel in twenty years. Running into a long-ago friend sets memory from the 1970s in motion for August, transporting her to a time and a place where friendship was everything—until it wasn’t. For August and her girls, sharing confidences as they ambled through neighborhood streets, Brooklyn was a place where they believed that they were beautiful, talented, brilliant—a part of a future that belonged to them. But beneath the hopeful veneer, there was another Brooklyn, a dangerous place where grown men reached for innocent girls in dark hallways, where ghosts haunted the night, where mothers disappeared. A world where madness was just a sunset away and fathers found hope in religion. Like Louise Meriwether’s Daddy Was a Number Runner and Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn heartbreakingly illuminates the formative time when childhood gives way to adulthood—the promise and peril of growing up—and exquisitely renders a powerful, indelible, and fleeting friendship that united four young lives.

Another Brooklyn A Novel

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