being so much more than you once believed yourself to be
October 6, 2020 9:07 PM Subscribe
"I wanted to say to my young self 'You’re loved. You’re beautiful. You’re complicated. You matter.' I know that by saying this to myself with each book I write, I am saying it to every reader who has ever felt otherwise." Author and poet Jacqueline Woodson has been named a 2020 MacArthur Fellow.
Woodson is the author of more than 30 books, including Another Brooklyn (nominated for the 2016 National Book Award) and Red at the Bone. In 2009, she won the Newbery Honor for After Tupac and D Foster. She won the 2014 National Book Award and the Coretta Scott King Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. She has also won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
The MacArthur Fellowship recognizes her for "Redefining children’s and young adult literature to encompass more complex issues and reflect the lives of Black children, teenagers, and families."
Jacqueline Woodson profile and poems, Poetry Foundation
Woodson talks Red at the Bone with:
Video and audio:
Jacqueline Woodson on Instagram | Jacqueline Woodson on Twitter
Woodson is the author of more than 30 books, including Another Brooklyn (nominated for the 2016 National Book Award) and Red at the Bone. In 2009, she won the Newbery Honor for After Tupac and D Foster. She won the 2014 National Book Award and the Coretta Scott King Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. She has also won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Hans Christian Andersen Award.
The MacArthur Fellowship recognizes her for "Redefining children’s and young adult literature to encompass more complex issues and reflect the lives of Black children, teenagers, and families."
Jacqueline Woodson profile and poems, Poetry Foundation
Woodson talks Red at the Bone with:
- The Guardian: "When I have questions, they usually become novels."
- Marie Claire: "It’s heartbreaking that people don't always know that books can be a tool and you don't have to be afraid. We're always going to say the wrong thing, you know? The wrong thing shouldn't be something that keeps us silent."
- The Seattle Times: "All of them, and each of us, is still in the making, still cooking, still fragile."
- ABA's IndieBound - "I like when the reader works ... I love a book that pretty much plays with all your senses, and you really have to take your time with Red at the Bone to follow the narrative."
- Jacqueline Woodson selects three of this year’s best novels (Air Mail digital weekly)
- 10 questions for author Jacqueline Woodson (Atlanta magazine, focus on Another Brooklyn)
- What Jacqueline Woodson Can’t Live Without (New York magazine - includes Schomburg Center membership and Ocean Vuong broadside)
- Who Can Tell My Story (Horn Book - written 20 years ago by Woodson)
- Jacqueline Woodson Transformed Children’s Literature. Now She’s Writing for Herself. (New York Times)
- Fun Facts About Me, from her website ("I can shake my eyeballs in bright light.")
Video and audio:
- What reading slowly taught me about writing (TED Talk)
- 2018 Library of Congress National Book Festival, talking about her new books, "The Day You Begin" and "Harbor Me"
- Brown Girl Dreaming and growing up in segregated South Carolina (Fresh Air, NPR)
- Advice for Writers - South Carolina Young Minds Dreaming Contest
- Another Brooklyn, community, extended family (Helga, WNYC)
- writing about deaf culture and sign language; oral history and bearing witness; and looking for yourself in literature (Reading Rockets, WETA)
Jacqueline Woodson on Instagram | Jacqueline Woodson on Twitter
As a MacArthur Fellow myself, I (a) know that this is a bit of a crap shot, (b) enthusiastically applaud the choice, and (c) feel so honored to be indirectly connected to people like this.
posted by brambleboy at 9:18 PM on October 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by brambleboy at 9:18 PM on October 6, 2020 [2 favorites]
One of the last big group events I attended before COVID hit was a Jacqueline Woodson talk/reading. She was wonderful and I was especially impressed with how she interacted with and was mindful of the kids in the audience. It was a great evening and I was so happy for her when I heard this news yesterday!
posted by bookmammal at 6:58 AM on October 7, 2020
posted by bookmammal at 6:58 AM on October 7, 2020
Jacqueline Woodson is one of my favorites and I'm thrilled that she got a MacArthur grant. (Wait, a children's book author got a MacArthur!? Oh, right, after she started writing adult fiction, that makes more sense...)
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, it seemed like all the books being published for teenagers were Issue Books, and they all cared more about educating readers on Tough Topics than on being good books.
Jacqueline Woodson writes beautiful books about Tough Topics that are not Issue Books. After Tupac and D Foster is my favorite; it made me cry in the laundromat. It's very sophisticated in how it handles that preteen wish for freedom and independence within a world where your parents want to protect you from the very real dangers of the world - racism, police brutality. What I wrote about it when I read it:
She writes sensitively about foster care, about drugs, about having an incarcerated parent.
I have a signed copy of Each Kindness that I got from Brooklyn Public Library when I worked for them, during an absolutely horrible year of work, and every time I read it I am reminded of how horrible that year was, but it's still one of my most treasured possessions. That's how good Jacqueline Woodson is.
posted by Jeanne at 3:28 PM on October 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
When I was a teenager in the late 90s, it seemed like all the books being published for teenagers were Issue Books, and they all cared more about educating readers on Tough Topics than on being good books.
Jacqueline Woodson writes beautiful books about Tough Topics that are not Issue Books. After Tupac and D Foster is my favorite; it made me cry in the laundromat. It's very sophisticated in how it handles that preteen wish for freedom and independence within a world where your parents want to protect you from the very real dangers of the world - racism, police brutality. What I wrote about it when I read it:
Their mothers aren't paranoid or overprotective. They're dealing with the realities of a world that an eleven-year-old girl should be spared from. They live in a dangerous world, dangerous despite their caring families, just because they are black.In 1995 she wrote about a teenage boy coming to terms with his mother being a lesbian. 1995! Twenty years before the floodgates of "YES, you can write YA books with gay characters in them" really started to open.
And yet, there's this one beautifully transcendent moment when D sneaks the girls off their block and onto a bus, and they go to the park at night, in the snow, and make snow angels.
I've seen a number of op-eds lately about how we used to let kids run around catching frogs and getting muddy, and now we don't. Sure, there's truth in that. But there's some privilege in it too.
I want these girls to keep on taking steps away from their block. I want them to make snow angels in the dark, and to grow up and find their purpose. And at the same time I wish they could just stay in that bubble of time before D's mother comes back, before Tupac gets killed.
The loveliness and the sadness of the book is that you can't have both.
She writes sensitively about foster care, about drugs, about having an incarcerated parent.
I have a signed copy of Each Kindness that I got from Brooklyn Public Library when I worked for them, during an absolutely horrible year of work, and every time I read it I am reminded of how horrible that year was, but it's still one of my most treasured possessions. That's how good Jacqueline Woodson is.
posted by Jeanne at 3:28 PM on October 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
This is a fantastic post, kristi!
I love Jacqueline Woodson's books so much. I read If You Come Softly soon after it was published, when I was a teenager, then I returned to it (and to the rest of her books) when I was adult, and it meant a lot to me both times. She writes so clearly, and with great empathy, about emotionally complicated understandings and situations. I think she's one of the finest writers, of any genre or any intended audience.
After Tupac and D Foster is one of my favorites, too. That, and Feathers. Or maybe I can't choose a favorite. Hearing that she's now acknowledged as a genius has made me feel a little better about the world this week. :)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:54 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
I love Jacqueline Woodson's books so much. I read If You Come Softly soon after it was published, when I was a teenager, then I returned to it (and to the rest of her books) when I was adult, and it meant a lot to me both times. She writes so clearly, and with great empathy, about emotionally complicated understandings and situations. I think she's one of the finest writers, of any genre or any intended audience.
After Tupac and D Foster is one of my favorites, too. That, and Feathers. Or maybe I can't choose a favorite. Hearing that she's now acknowledged as a genius has made me feel a little better about the world this week. :)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:54 PM on October 8, 2020 [1 favorite]
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In mid-August, the poets.org poem-a-day email featured Jacqueline Woodson's Absolute. I really liked the poem, and started looking around for more info about her. I loved what she said about her stories, writing, reading.
She seems so wonderful, so smart and cool and thoughtful and wise, and I bookmarked a bunch of links to someday share on MetaFilter.
Then this morning I saw an article announcing that Jacqueline Woodson, N.K. Jemisin and Tressie McMillan Cottom were among 21 winners of the 2020 MacArthur Foundation "genius grants.", and I figured it was a good time to turn those links into a post.
posted by kristi at 9:13 PM on October 6, 2020 [10 favorites]