Another Brooklyn: A Novel

I enjoyed this novel very much. I read this for a book club and am so glad I did. The author has a poet's sensibility. If the power of words moves you, do yourself a favor and read this. Ignore the negative reviews. Some people just have no room for beauty in their hearts.

Exquisite! Such a beautifully written piece of work, that it felt like poetry, both in the flow and the content. It has an ethereal dreamy quality and is full of rich metaphors.I have been struggling with my review of this book, because whatever I seem to write doesn’t really do the book justice. It is such a unique beautiful piece of writing. The story begins with August, the narrator, returning by train to visit her dying father. She catches a glimpse of Sylvia, a childhood friend and memories come flooding back to her. The ethereal quality of the book has in part to do with the fact that the narrator is looking way back on an earlier part of her life; in part that she is remembering her childhood, one in which she could not comprehend or accept the death of her mother; and thirdly the poetic quality to the writing.The idea that August thinks her mother will return and convinces her younger brother of the same, feels so honest, so real, so a part of how children really cope with the loss of a parent. Within the book, different cultural rites of death are mentioned reminding the reader that death is there, but not letting us know the actual circumstances of the mother’s death until later.Once August arrives in Brooklyn with her father and brother, the father cages the children in the house worried about the dangers of the outside world. This backfires as her younger brother falls through the glass window injuring his arm in his attempts to watch the outside world. At this point, August and her brother are allowed outside to experience the world.August reminisces about her female friendships from this era in her life. She had developed a close-knit group of girlfriends who become her “home, ” her family, and this allows her feel alive again, after feeling cooped up in their Brooklyn apartment. Together these girls feel stronger and braver. Their friendship gives them a sense of safety, of home, of togetherness that is lacking from their home environments. They grow into puberty together, date, experiment with sex. They confide in each other, things that they do not feel safe confiding to their own parents.August’s mother’s words about not trusting female friendships keep echoing back to her. “Don’t trust women, my mother said to me. Even the ugly ones will take what you thought was yours.” August learns how this can be true as the friendships begin to slip and in some cases fracture. However, for a time, the friendships are a beautiful thing and allow the girls to feel powerful in a world where they are vulnerable, on account of being female, minorities and poor.This reflection is of Brooklyn in the 1970’s in a neighborhood that is turning from white to black. While August finds comfort in her friendships, her father finds comfort in religion. It is a stunning look at this place and time period, the struggles these girls faced as they came of age and the hope and courage needed to face it. I highly recommend this to everyone.

“I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.”August returns to New York for her father’s funeral, which sends her mind spinning back to those years, so long ago.“The green of Tennessee faded quickly into the foreign world of Brooklyn, heat rising from cement. I thought of my mother often, lifting my hand to stroke my own check, imagining her beside me, explaining this newness, the fast pace of it, the impenetrable gray of it. When my brother cried, I shushed him, telling him not to worry. She’s coming soon, I said, trying to echo her. She’s coming tomorrow. And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.”Life in 1970’s Brooklyn, seen again through her eyes, now 35, but her heart only knows them as the streets where she learned the value of friendship. Friends with girls, the ones her mother had always warned her against. Girls were not to be trusted, but August knew they were the ones who saw her. The ones she told about her first kiss, Sylvia, Angela and Gigi.Her father had his newfound faith, her brother, too. She danced in and out with her faith, at home it became her way, but out in the world with Gig, Sylvia and Angela, she was just a girl. A girl with boundaries, but a girl, still open to the world and all it had to offer.They dreamed together, ran together, listened together. Their dream worlds collide with the real world. Children being taken away by a strange woman from the apartment downstairs. Babies being made. Blackouts and lootings. A woman found dead on a winter’s rooftop. Like our memories, they travel through time, jumping here and there, and always there is music.I’ve only recently read “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Woodson, for which she won a National Book Award. It’s no wonder that her writing has garnered so many awards, recognitions, her voice as a writer is so magical it has the ability to transport you back in time and walk those streets with her. I could hear the music, see the groups of girls giggling, huddled together. She has a gift for writing that makes everything sound as if it were a poem you heard in a dream. Lovely, lyrical, but unlike a dream, it stays with you. And what a treat that is.“’Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson, and this book is filled with hope. It is not hopeless, it sees more of what life offers than what life is missing, it never loses sight of the possibility of a better future, and gratitude for life, with all its pain and problems.Highly recommended.

The opening paragraph of Another Brooklyn is a stunner:"For a long time, my mother wasn't dead yet. Mine could have been a more tragic story. My father could have given in to the bottle or the needle or a woman and left my brother and me to care for ourselves—or worse, in the care of New York City Children's Services, where, my father said, there was seldom a happy ending. But this didn't happen. I know now that what is tragic isn't the moment. It is the memory."Bam. With an opening paragraph like that, I was expecting a real tour de force.In the end, the novel did not live up to the promise embodied by this very strong beginning, although it definitely has its merits. It’s a fever dream, like viewing a woman's childhood through a diaphanous curtain, everything hazy and yet the silhouettes very visible. Woodson taps into August's emotional truth and the ungraspable, fleeting nature of memories, the desire to understand the contours of one's past and the impossibility of ever really knowing the whys and wherefores of it.When a child is unmoored, there is often a desperate attachment to childhood friendships, a desire to create a new family. Another Brooklyn captures this very well. There was truth in the way the characters eventually change and grow apart in late adolescence, each going her own way, leaving the others to fend for themselves in the adult world.

Jacqueline Woodson takes us inside August’s thoughts as a woman of colour sharing her journey to adulthood. August is a about the same age as me and although our experiences were quite different, parts are of the times was relatable.

The story of the girls growing up is excellent but what happened to each of them and the why is missing

This story is a recollection of childhood told by our protagonist August. She recalls what is was like growing up in brooklyn with her single dad and brother. We see her grow up and meet 3 best friends with the dark back drop of brooklyn surrounding them they search for the light in the hopes and dreams of their future.Aside from the fictional narrative we also get a realistic look into what is was like for a girl growing up in Brooklyn in the 70s, dangerous people, drugs, looting etc.This is a novella told in short vignette chapters, I actually felt this book could of been longer or more in depth with its character development as I felt quite disconnected although it was an interesting story.

ANOTHER BROOKLYN by JACQUELINE WOODSONI read this book in the space of a few hours and as soon as I finished I turned back to the first page again. I didn’t read it all again - just that first page and it worked. It’s a cyclical book. It doesn’t need to be read in any particular order. Memories manifest in any way they want to.This book is a series of memories told from the point of view of August; a teenager growing up in Brooklyn in the 1970s. She states early on in the book that life would have been different if she’d known about jazz, but all she knew of was the top 40 (white artists mostly). And “it never quite figured us out.” I found that one statement to be huge! It’s a 170 page novel, but that statement to me felt bigger than the messages I’ve taken from 1000 page novels. If we can’t see ourselves represented, how can we see ourselves at all? My own white privilege means that this is something I rarely have to think about, but this book helped me to understand how that might feel and it is a scary feeling.Among issues such as institutionalised racism and that difficult period between childhood and teenagehood, this book also deals with loss of a parent. The first line of the novel completely floored me: “For a long time, my mother wasn’t dead yet.” Tell me you aren’t desperate to read this book based on that line alone!?This book is lyrical and far-reaching in exactly the same way as Red at the Bone is, so if you liked that one then you really must read this one.