I’m a sucker for award-winning, young-adult novels. So, I can’t remember how it came to be there now, but it’s not too surprising that I had Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) by Jacqueline Woodson on my wait list at the library. From my diligent research before borrowing this book [reading the title], I assumed that it was the coming-of-age story of a young, black girl. On the one hand, I was right,Brown Girl Dreaming is a coming-of-age story. However, where I was expecting a fictional novel; this turned out […]
The Life of a Woman Poet
Last year for my birthday, my friend S got me a book. He told me that when he went to Half-Priced Books, he asked to see the Feminist Literature section. It tickled me to no end. He decided on Eavan Boland’s Object Lessons, which I had never read, though I *loved* In a Time of Violence, one of her poetry collections. He chose well, since Boland gets more personal in this memoir/poetry criticism hybrid. I found it to be an enjoyable, if challenging, read. Object […]
A Young Woman’s Dreams
Last year, my sister bought me the young adult memoir-in-verse, Brown Girl Dreaming. And then it went on to win the National Book Award for young readers! Hooray! I have been meaning to read it again and again, and something else got in the way. So when I was at my conference, chilling in my hotel room, I decided to pull out the audio copy I had borrowed from the library and listen to it. It was a good choice. Jacqueline Woodson covers her birth […]
Poetry…purposely complicated
Readings 4 & 5 for the masters program are two collections of poetry, “Holding Company” by Major Jackson, and “Poems” by Elizabeth Bishop. I’ve come out of it with the understanding that poetry isn’t for me. I mean, I sort of went in with that notion, but slogging through over 200 pages of it has really hit the nail into the coffin. This isn’t to say that I hated them; there were many of the 150 or so poems I read that I liked for […]
Let yourself be triggered.
Well, it’s a first for me to give anything Neil Gaiman has written less than four stars, but I’m reminding myself that according to Goodreads’ rating system, that means “I liked it.” And I did! Some of the stories were delightful and magical, and terrifying. But some of them didn’t really work for me, for one reason or another, and overall, it was actually harder to pay attention to the stories, or work up enough energy to dive back into the book, knowing I’d have […]
Unpretentious poetry I actually liked
It’s an understatement to say that poetry is very much not my thing, but friends kept telling me that I HAD to read Brown Girl Dreaming and now I’m telling everyone here that they HAVE to read it. Well, no one’s going to make you, but you won’t regret it if you do. A book in verse sounds ominously pretentious, but Brown Girl Dreaming ended up being a refreshing and honest coming-of-age tale, simple enough for middle schoolers to understand and complex enough for adults […]