Jacqueline Woodson
1 book analyzed
Biography
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1963 and grew up primarily in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York — the exact geography of Brown Girl Dreaming. She was a slow reader as a child but a compulsive story-maker, and her eventual discovery that writing was her vocation mirrors the arc of the memoir precisely. She is now the author of more than thirty books for children and young adults, winner of the National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming (2014) and multiple Newbery Honor awards, and served as the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature from 2015 to 2017. She has spoken extensively about the experience of being a Black girl who loved stories in a country that did not always believe such stories deserved to be told.