Another Brooklyn audiobook

This gorgeous novel is a poem. It is a love letter to black girlhood.

Each week, sister Sonja said, Start at the beginning, her dark fingers bending around a small black notebook, pen poised. Many moments passed before I opened my mouth to speak. Each week, I began with the words I was waiting for my mother… A forest grows in Bushwick. At 35, August, a worldly anthropologist, back in New York City to bury her father, recalls her growing up years. In Tennessee, when she was eight, her mother, was unable to cope with news of her brother’s death in Viet Nam. She persisted in talking to her lost, beloved sibling as if he were still present. When dad finally replants August and her little brother in the county of Kings, his home town, a new life sprouts for them. We see through August’s eyes what life was like for a young black girl in 1970s Brooklyn. From white flight to the drug epidemic, from DJ parties in the park to dangerous sorts, interested in drugs and young girls, from blackouts and looting to the influence of the Nation of Islam, from innocence to awakening sexuality, from finding friends to seeing the world slowly opening to reveal diverse paths, many dangers, and some ways through. A core element of the story is August coming to grips with her absent, Godot-like mother. The bulk of her story, as it might for most of us, centers on her friends. My brother had the faith my father brought him to, and for a long time, I had Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi, the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn, as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying, Here. Help me carry this. Time shifts back and forth. August is 8, then 15 then 11. Woodson uses front page touchstones to place us, and August, in time. Son of Sam, the blackout of 1977, Biafran starvelings, and popular entertainment. On a different planet, we could have been Lois Lane or Jane or Mary Tyler Moore or Marlo Thomas. We could have thrown our hats up, twirled and smiled. We could have made it after all. We watched the shows. We knew the songs. We sang along when Mary was big-eyed and awed by Minneapolis. We dreamed with Marlo of someday hitting the big time. We took off with the Flying Nun. The dreams the girls nurture come face to face with the roots from which they grow. Possibilities appear. And impediments. Can their friendship survive the winds that push and pull them in diverse directions as they branch out? Maybe this is how it happened for everyone—adults promising us their own failed futures, I was bright enough to teach, my father said, even as my dream of stepping into Sylvia’s skin included one day being a lawyer. Angela’s mom had draped the dream of dancing over her. And Gigi, able to imitate every one of us, could step inside anyone she wanted to be, close her eyes, and be gone. Close her eyes and be anywhere. Memory is a refrain here, a blues chorus. Not sure I agree with Woodson’s take, or is it August‘s take on where tragedy lies, (I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It’s the memory.) but it is an interesting take nonetheless. Jacqueline Woodson - from NPR References to how other cultures deal with death pepper the narrative, a way of illuminating how August, her family and friends cope with loss. It is moving and effective. There is a lyricism, a musicality to Woodson’s writing, her language flowing and floating, rhythmic, poetic, reading like it was meant to be read aloud. Stunning lines wait around every bend, insightful, beautiful, polished to a fine gleam. Her books for young audiences have gained her considerable acclaim. Brown Girl Dreaming won Woodson a 2014 National Book Award. She has received a lifetime achievement award for her YA writing. She won a Coretta Scott King award in 2001 for Miracle’s Boys, and several Newbery awards. I would not be at all surprised to see this book as well up for a slew of awards. While Another Brooklyn is definitely intended for adult readers, her YA writing DNA manifests in the physical structure, the short sentences, with big space between them. And the size. Another Brooklyn is not a long book. On the one hand, you will rip through it in no time, the first time, a drive through. You may take a bit longer the second time, recognizing that this is a treat to be savored, and linger a while, maybe wander through on a bike. It will turn out the same, but you may notice more store windows as you pedal down these streets, or living things, a beech here, a maple there. City-like, there is a lot compressed into a small space. You might even stroll through for a third look-see, picking up some bits and pieces unseen on previous readings. Not sayin’ ya have to, but if you get the urge I would go with it. There are some tough life experiences on display here, but we know that August makes it through. An important element of the story is hope. Talent may not always shine a light to a better future but sometimes it can. Intelligence may not always be seen, appreciated or nurtured. But sometimes it is. Hard times and personal loss are definitely painful, but maybe they are part of the compost of our lives. While the streets of her world may have been named for trees of a long gone sylvan past, Linden, Palmetto, Evergreen…Woodbine, (the name Bushwick, by the way, comes from Boswijck, which means “little town in the woods”), lives still grow there, tall and strong. August is a mighty oak. Her story of growing is lyrical, poetic, and moving. Another Brooklyn may not take much time to read, once, twice, or even more times. But as little time as it will take you to let this one in, it will plant a seed in your memory, another in your heart and grow there for a very long time. Publication date – 8/9/2016Review first posted – 6/17/2016=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal, Twitter, FB, and Tumblr pagesSeptember 15, 2016 - Another Brooklyn is named to the long list for the National Book Award. Congratulations!October 6, 2016 - Another Brooklyn is named to the short list for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction - Brava! November 23, 2016 - Another Brooklyn is named to the NY Times list of 100 Notable Books of 2016November 25, 2017 - NY Times - Love to Love You, Baby - Woodson article remembering being fifteen and discovering the excitement of Manhattan.

4.5 stars . I read Jacqueline Woodson's profile and want to tell her what her fifth grade teacher told her about a story she wrote, "This is really good" , but it's not enough. I want to tell her how gorgeous her writing is, how I saw Brooklyn in the 1970's - that place and time through her writing as if I was there , how I kept rereading sentences because I wanted to read them again . August returns to Brooklyn as an adult for her father's funeral and through flashbacks, reminiscences, a stream of consciousness in a way, somehow you know what it's like to be 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 year old black girl, then a teenager in Brooklyn, NY wondering where her mother is and why she didn't follow her and her father and her brother from Tennessee. There are the girl friends who held each other up as they faced their teen dilemmas each day , their individual burdens in their home life and worse against the sexual predators, drug addicts in the hallways and streets . At times she draws us back to the present as a worldly anthropologist studying how different cultures deal with death, to the places she's been. There is just so much here in this relatively short novel - the era, the place , what it meant to be a black girl growing up in this time and how one copes with individual loss , how memory shapes us. The greatest compliment I think I can give is to say that Woodson was born to write. I was so taken with her writing that I have already started to read Brown Girl Dreaming which has been waiting on my kindle for way too long .Thanks to Amistad/ HarperCollins and a Edelweiss.

Audiobook..... I'm guessing 99.9% of audiobook listeners will instantly connect with the narrator's delivery. I was fully captivated by this story - BEAUTIFULLY written!!!!!!! .....makes me think of the relationship between YING and YANG. Neither Ying or Yang are absolute. It's also not static. It flows with time... which is how I see the context for this story. Beauty and tragedy are interchangeable throughout. Scene after scene is so easily remembered -- that we could almost rewind an invisible audiobook and play it back word for word. But between those words and scenes is mystery. And that's where we - the readers - comes into play. Our thoughts are respected - so brilliant the way the author writes to include readers interpretation. I found myself drawing conclusions about the different characters. How do we get from white Go-Go boots to 'kids' taking bets if the heroin street addicts are going to fall over? How do we begin to understand that the girl who is singing in choir is having a penis rubbed against her ass by the priest? And how the heck does 1 father protect his children from the dangers of the city? AND.....the confusion and loss from the mother they once remembered? One of the best 'slim books' I've read in a long time!!!!

Man, I love a short book.Anyone can write a 300 page (or god forbid, longer) book and make me care about characters. Okay, no they can't. I rarely do. But still, that's all the time in the world. That's no excuse.But making me care about them in UNDER 200??? Now that's a feat.And okay, making me care about them at all is, too. Let's just say it's a double feat and move on.I've read four Jacqueline Woodson novels, all of them have been under 200 pages, and all of them have included characters I care about.It's hard for a short book to be perfect, but hers come pretty damn close!!Bottom line: Short books for life!-----------------pre-reviewnothing says slump like taking 4 days to finish a book that's under 200 pages even though you're enjoying it!!help.review to come / 4 stars-----------------tbr reviewis there anything better than finding a perfect brand new DISCOUNTED copy of an acclaimed book you've had on your radar in a cool bookstore???

A woman named August returns home to Brooklyn for her fathers funeral and reflects on her family's life together with her parents and brother in Tennessee and then later on growing up as a black child/teenager in a poor part of Brooklyn after the death of her mother. August also tells us much about growing up with three other girlfriends and what life was like for all of them in the 70's. Nicely written!

Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson is a 2016 Amistad publication. Extraordinary, emotional, touching and bittersweet.Because this author has mostly written within the young adult and middle grade genres, she has never popped up on my radar. But, when I noticed this book was a National Book Award finalist, and was creating a little buzz, I decided to take a closer look. As I have mentioned several times before, the ‘coming of age’ trope is not one of my favorites, and this book obviously falls into that category, but the time period the book was set in, piqued my interest, and was ultimately the deciding factor for me. Having no idea, really, what to expect, I was instantly drawn in by August’s first person narrative, and before I knew it, I had spent my entire morning reading this novel, unable to tear myself away from it. When August, a world traveled anthropologist, returns to Brooklyn to care for her father who is dying of liver cancer, she has a brief run in with a childhood friend, which sparks a flood memories, which is at the center of his poignant coming of age tale. In the 1973, August’s mother slips into a form of mental illness, becoming a danger to her children, prompting her father to move them away from Tennessee to Brooklyn, New York. Every day August tells her brother their mother will join them tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow….In the meantime, her father takes comfort from his new religious conversion to Islam as did her brother, but August finds strength and consolation from her new friends, Angela, Gigi, and Sylvia. This story chronicles August’s life in her Bushwick area of Brooklyn in the 1970’s. The white population is fleeing the area, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rican residents were moving in steadily, the drug problems and the extreme dangers for young girls who are always at risk for some form of sexual assault, sets the stage for what turns out to be a day to day battle, for August and her friends, who are determined to avoid the pitfalls and traps all around them to obtain their goals, dreams, and desires. August experiences all the pains and triumphs of growing up, from first loves, tragedies, betrayals, heartbreak, teaching her important life lessons along the way, and eventually becomes the catalyst that finally breaks loose long denied truths, shaping her adult life in ways she may not have realized. This is a poignant tale, superbly written, capturing the essence of the times, the angst of heartbreak, the troublesome aspects of mental illness, and the importance of family and friends. The sad tale, which triggers a memory within August, finally allowing her to come to terms with the realities of her life, despite her vehement denial of events that brought her family to Brooklyn in the first place. I wish books had soundtracks the same way movies do, because this book has a superb 1970's soundtrack,which I could almost hear running in the background, which was certainly fun to think back on. August’s discussion regarding memory is initially harmful for her, painful to her, turns into a comfort in time. It’s thought provoking the way the mind moves in to protect us at times, preserving those memories for a time when we’re able to cope with them better. Although this story is often emotional, distressing, and sad, it is also, moving and stirring, but the loudest voice I heard, the deepest message I took away from this lovely, and beautifully written novel, was hope. Overall, I am super impressed with this author and her writing skills, and can certainly understand why this novel has garnered so much praise. 4 stars

4.5★“Everywhere we looked, we saw the people trying to dream themselves out. As though there was someplace other than this place. As though there was another Brooklyn.”What a delicious, haunting little book. It’s not fat physically, but it’s sure full of food for thought. Although I have touched on some of the main points of the story (the challenges August faces), this isn't plot-driven, and most is shown to us early.August and her younger brother have just buried their father, and she looks back twenty years and tells their story. She has had counselling from a therapist, who tells her everyone has suffered tragedies, as if that will ease August’s suffering. (Aren't most of us guilty of that?)We share her experience as a young girl growing up without a mother. That’s the first challenge. She keeps assuring her little brother that their mother “is coming, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” , but when she asks her father what’s in the jar, he tells her, with increasing exasperation “You know what’s in that jar.” She was a carefree, little black girl (the second challenge) in SweetGrove, Tennessee, but her father moved the children to Brooklyn (the third challenge). She reminisces about the first time she saw her three best friends from her window. “The three of them walked down our block, dressed in halter tops and shorts, arms linked together, heads thrown back, laughing. I watched until they disappeared, wondering who they were, how they . . . became.” When she has happy times with her three best friends - “the four of us sharing the weight of growing up Girl in Brooklyn as though it was a bag of stones we passed among ourselves saying ‘Here. Help me carry this.” They are slightly different colours and from slightly different social strata (the fourth and fifth challenges) and have to learn to navigate each other’s families. They look different, come from different tribes (my words) – braids, cornrows, long wavy hair, part-Chinese, reddish hair, darker or lighter skin.She and her brother are tight friends, sharing a room, holding hands for comfort. They spend time looking out their window at the people passing by, wondering how and what they will become when they grow up. As the girls develop curves, they also learn to navigate the increasing attention of males, both the predatory, creepy older ones and the same-age, urgently horny younger ones whom they want to satisfy. (Now we're up to her sixth challenge.) “‘The pastor at my church comes up behind me sometimes when I’m singing in choir,’ Gigi said. ‘I can feel his thing on my back. Don’t sing in your church choir. Or if you sing in it, go to another place while you sing.’ And she whispered how she was the queen of other places. ‘Close my eyes and boom, I’m gone. I learned it from my mother,’ she told us. ‘So many days you look in that woman’s eyes and she isn’t even there.’” This is an experience that would be familiar to most girls and women I know – unwanted physical contact – and the advice that many have probably followed. Kind of like “don’t ask, don’t tell”. I remember hearing English wives were counselled to “Lie back and think of England,” to ensure English population growth. “Summer came again and men and boys were everywhere, feathery hands on our backsides in crowds, eyes falling too long at our chests, whispers into our ears as we passed strangers. Promises – of things they could do to us, with us, for us.” Then a cheerleader captain was badly beaten by her family. “’She got a baby inside her,’ her brother finally admitted. ‘She got sent back Down South.’ “We pulled our boyfriends’ fingers from inside of us, pushed them away, buttoned our blouses. We knew Down South. Everyone had one. Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico. The threat of a place we could end back up in to be raised by a crusted-over single auntie or strict grandmother.” Their father forms a serious liaison with a Muslim woman after joining the Nation of Islam, (peacefully and happily). He brings home Sister Loretta, whom they like very much and who tells them they are eating poison, and shows them the right way to live. (And I think this is thing number 7, more than enough challenges for one person.)So she’s motherless, young, coloured, either more or less poor than her friends, doesn’t quite belong to any tribe, and is becoming a teenager full of hormones. And her father’s new faith means it’s goodbye bacon and ham sandwiches at home. Then comes the counselling, mentioned earlier. “Sister Sonja was a thin woman, her brown face all angles beneath a black hijab. So this is who the therapist became to me – the woman with the hijab, fingers tapered, dark eyes questioning. by then, maybe it was too late.” In this short book, we even get to see a bit of what happened to the girls when they grew up. It is just wonderful. There were a few repetitive phrases, which jarred ever so slightly, but by golly, what a fine piece of work this is.Thanks to NetGalley and OneWorld Publications for the review copy from which I've quoted, and I truly hope the quotes don't change in the final copy. I love the writing!

4 stars! I devoured this book in one sitting! This is the first book I have read by Jacqueline Woodson and it definitely won't be my last - I absolutely loved her writing style - very unique! I was completely absorbed in the journey through adolescence of the four main girls - August, Sylvia, Angela and Gigi. I felt their emotions as if I was there with them in the stories August narrated. Though quite dark at times, I found myself rooting for the girls to stick together and persevere. A quick, captivating read!