Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson (born February 12, 1963)  is an American author of books written for children and young adults, as well as a poet and activist. She is the author of more than 30 books for children and young adults, including Locomotion (2003), After Tupac & D Foster (2008), and Brown Girl Dreaming (2014).

## **Early/ Personal Life**

Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio but spent much of her early life with her siblings in Greenville, South Carolina. Her family moved to Brooklyn, New York when she was seven years old. She is the second youngest sibling in her family with an older brother and sister named Hope and Odella and a younger brother named Roman.

While in school, Woodson loved English and any opportunity to write. Unless she was reading, she loved any chance to dance or jump around. Her favorite authors while growing up were Virginia Hamilton and Judy Blume and she loved The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde, The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson, and Stevie by Jon Steptoe.

Some of her major literary influences include James Baldwin and Virginia Hamilton and Toni Morrison. She states,

> “Two major writers for me are James Baldwin and Virginia Hamilton. It blew me away to find out Virginia Hamilton was a sister like me. Later, Nikki Giovanni had a similar effect on me. I feel that I learned how to write from Baldwin. He was onto some future stuff, writing about race and gender long before people were comfortable with those dialogues. He would cross class lines all over the place, and each of his characters was remarkably believable. I still pull him down from my shelf when I feel stuck."
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Currently, she lives in Brooklyn with her partner Juliet Widoff, their two children- a daughter named Toshi and a son named Jackson-Leroi and a dog and cat named Toffee and Fred.

## **Career**

Jacqueline Woodson received a bachelor's degree in English from Howard University and worked as a children's drama therapist. She began working for Kirchoff/Wohlber after graduating from college. She helped write the standardized reading test in California and then went on to join Bunny Gable’s children’s book writing class. It was there that an editor at Delacorte asked for a manuscript for Woodson’s book, Last Summer with Maizon. Thereafter Wendy Lamb became Woodson’s editor and helped publish her first six books.

## **Themes**

Woodson intentionally writes with her adolescent audience in mind and hence tackles universal issues about belonging and adolescence in her writing. Throughout her work, she also deals with issues of race, gender, poverty, sexuality and mental illness. She hopes to give a voice to a complex range of characters from a variety of backgrounds that she believes are often discluded from children’s and young adult literature.

For example, her 2001 picture book, *The Other Side* looks at the relationships of two girls, one black and one white, who sit on opposite sides of a fence in a segregated town. Woodson wrote *The Dear One*- a novel highlighting issues of poverty and class through the story of Rebecca who is poor and pregnant at fifteen years old, and Afeni a wealthy and spoiled twelve-year-old girl during her work with runaway and homeless young people—many of whom were pregnant. She writes about gay identity and adolescence in *The House You Pass on the Way*, which tells the story of the friendship between two girls in an intolerant town in South Carolina.

Woodson most often writes from the perspective of a young female narrator. She understands that girls rarely get discussed in books and films, and she wants to tell the story of black girlhood.

> “I wanted to put into the world these windows and mirrors of those girls’ lives. We get a lot of stories of white girls, but we don’t see a lot of depth and intricacy in black girl relationships. I have a 14-year-old daughter. I had really close friends from childhood and still do. But this story is not the one that always gets told.” (Atlanta Magazine)
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She prioritizes telling diverse stories that paint a picture of the world in which children can find images of themselves.

> “I feel like it’s so important to give children mirrors. I write across so many lines of race and class and gender, and all of these perspectives matter. It’s so important that kids see themselves in the literature. I think it can be a really dangerous thing when young kids lack mirrors of themselves in the world, when they lack a sense of who they are. When I’m writing for them, reading to them, I’m saying: Here you are, and you matter.- (Atlanta Magazine)
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## **Style**

Woodson always writes with her audience in mind. She emphasizes the poetic nature of words in her writing- in her picture and poetry books, but also in her novels for adults and middle grades. She is also known for her poetic style across all of her work.

> “Everything I write, I read out loud. It has to not only look a certain way on the page but it has to sound a certain way. And that’s how I edit--because if it’s not sounding right, then it’s not going to read right. I have a lot of my work memorized because of the reading and the rereading of it out loud. I just need to hear how it sounds.” (Audio File Magazine)
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## **Critique**

Because Woodson often tackles issues that many consider sensitive, her books are often challenged for their content. When interviewed about the controversy around her novel, *If You Come Softly* (1998), a story about the fatal shooting of an African American teen, and the way the book was embraced by young people while meeting resistance from adults, she understood that it was important for young people to see themselves and their world with compassion and understanding.

Woodson writes about those real word experiences that young people face every day. But because of the controversial nature of the content, she still finds her work under fire in libraries, and schools around the country. In response to her work being challenged, she states that she continues to write despite the push back.

> “I’m writing about everyday life and real issues and real people—I mean real characters who are trying to find their footing. And I think the thing that is called “controversial” is the thing that makes other people uncomfortable. I’m not uncomfortable writing about this stuff. I write because I think it’s so necessary. I would be uncomfortable not writing about it.”  (Writer's Digest)
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## **Awards/ Recognition**

NAACP Image Award

Poetry Foundation, Young People’s Poet Laureate

Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement

ALA Best Book for Young Adults

Newberry Honor Medal

* Brown Girl Dreaming (2014)
* After Tupac and D Foster (2008)
* Feathers (2007)
* Show Way (2005)

Coretta Scott King Award

* Brown Girl Dreaming (2015)
* Each Kindness (2013)
* Locomotion (2004)
* Miracle Boys (2001)
* From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (1996)
* I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This (1995)

National Book Award

* Young People’s Literature (2014)- Winner
* Another Brooklyn (2016)- Nominee
* Locomotion (2003)- Nominee
* Hush (2002)- Nominee

Caldecott Medal

## **Works**

Young Adult

* The Dear One (1990)
* Last Summer with Maizon (1990) (Maizon #1)
* Maizon at Blue Hill (1992) (Maizon #2)
* Between Madison and Palmetto (1993) (Maizon#3)
* I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This (1994)
* From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (1995)
* The House You Pass on the Way (1997)
* If You Come Softly (1998)
* Lena (1999)
* Miracle's Boys (2000)
* Hush (2002)
* Behind You (2004)
* Feathers (2007)
* After Tupac and D Foster (2008)
* Peace Locomotion (2009)
* Locomotion (2010)
* Beneath a Meth Moon (2012)
* The Letter Q: Queer Writers' Notes to Their Younger Selves (2012)
* Brown Girl Dreaming (2014)

Illustrated Works/ Children’s Books

* Martin Luther King, Jr. and His Birthday (nonfiction), illus. Floyd Cooper (1990)
* Book Chase, illus. Steve Cieslawski (1994)
* We Had a Picnic This Sunday Past, illus. Diane Greenseid (1997)
* Sweet, Sweet Memory, illus. Floyd Cooper (2000)
* The Other Side, illus. E. B. Lewis (2001)
* Visiting Day, illus. James Ransome (2002)
* Our Gracie Aunt, illus. Jon J. Muth (2002)
* Coming on Home Soon, illus. E. B. Lewis (2003)
* Show Way, illus. Hudson Talbott (2006)
* Pecan Pie Baby, illus. Sophie Blackall (2010)
* Each Kindness, illus. E. B. Lewis (2012)
* This Is the Rope, illus. James Ransome (2013)
* The Day You Begin, illus. Rafael Lopez (2018)