In 2014, author Walter Dean Myers wrote a New York Times piece lamenting the dearth of books about children of color—and calling upon publishers to do better. Several months later, as it happened, the world was graced with Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming—precisely the kind of book Myers had longed to see as a child.
Woodson’s searing memoir in verse traces the trajectories that made her who she is: her ancestors’ path from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement, her journey from her 1963 birth in Ohio to the segregated South to Brooklyn, and her transformation from struggling reader to gifted storyteller and writer.
Her work sent a powerful message: Stories about Black and brown children are for all readers. The book won multiple awards, including a National Book Award.
The message was one Woodson had been preaching for years; her groundbreaking 1998 essay for the Horn Book pushed the kid lit community to consider questions of authenticity and voice: “We want the chance to tell our own stories, to tell them honestly and openly.…My belief is that there is room in the world for all stories, and that everyone has one.”
Her memoir remains a potent window and mirror for young people and adults alike. Last year, to mark the book’s 10th anniversary, author Roxane Gay, actor/screenwriter Lena Waithe, activist Marley Dias, and others gathered at New York City’s Symphony Space for an emotional night of celebration. The book still exhorts readers to keep dreaming—and reminds us that all children deserve to see their stories told.
Mahnaz Dar is a young readers’ editor.
