Jacqueline Woodson, laureate 2018 1
famous black film producer. One day their paths l
iterally collide, and they fall in love at first sight. Ellie, speaking in the first person, describes their fragile relationship as it grows. Jeremiah’s story is told in the third person and includes the reactions of an outside world shaped by racism and police brutality. “Thing about white people,” his father tells him, “they know what everybody else is, but they don’t know they’re white.” The thirteen-year-old narrator of From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun (1995) realizes one day that his mother is in love with another woman—a white woman. He pours his indignation and anger into the pages of his journals. We follow the path of Melanin’s thoughts and emotions from rage and despair to the beginnings of understanding and ultimately to acceptance. The fifteen-year-old protagonist in Beneath A Meth Moon (2012), Laurel, also keeps a diary to work through her feelings. Laurel must confront uncomfortable memories so she can put her past behind her and break free of a drug addiction. Laurel has lost both her mother and her grandmother in Hurricane Katrina, the storm that struck the southern coast of the United States in 2005. Words her grandmother told her now become her mantra: “While you are living … it’s the rocks in your life that will stand by you. Your words, your friends, your family.” THEMES OF LOSS AND LONGING Descriptions of family are also a central part of Woodson’s books. We often meet embattled families whose fathers are physically or emotionally absent. Hush (2002) is a story about loss, lives disrupted, and the difficulties faced by a family trying to start over. The father is the only African-American policeman in his district in Denver, Colorado. He becomes a witness to the fatal shooting of an unarmed, unresisting African-American boy who is gunned down by two of his fellow policemen. When he decides to testify against them, his family must enter witness protection, change their identities, and leave Denver. Through the eyes of his younger daughter, we watch the father sink into depression. He sits by the window, unreachable, lost in his head. Meanwhile, the mother finds sanctuary with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Each daughter finds her own way of coping with her new life. One immerses herself in schoolwork so she can get into a good college. The other throws herself into running. “I am no longer who I was in Denver, but at least and most I am,” one daughter says. In other words, she refuses to be a victim of her circumstances. Jacqueline Woodson’s stories breathe compassion, solidarity, and empathy. Using varied and deceptively simple language, she imbues each of her characters with a unique voice. Through these voices, she tells a highly personal history of our times. As she urges in Brown Girl Dreaming: “Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen.”