Brown Girl Dreaming

Nonfiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Middle Grade | Published in 2014

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Summary

Section Summaries & Analyses

Sections 1-2

Sections 3-5

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Sections 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Section 1 Summary: “i am born”

This first section of the memoir covers Woodson’s birth and ancestry. Woodson is born in Columbus, Ohio, near where her paternal family lives. Her mother is from Greenville, South Carolina. Woodson has an older brother, Hope, and an older sister, Odella. Woodson is named Jacqueline as a compromise between her father and her mother: Her father had initially wanted to call her Jack, naming her after himself.

In “the woodsons of ohio,” Woodson’s father’s side of the family traces their lineage back to “Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe, said to be / the first son / of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings” (8). They pride themselves on their worldly accomplishments, and believe that they “had a head start” because of their distinguished heritage (9).

Woodson also has a sense of her mother’s South Carolina heritage, and the larger heritage of Black people in the United States. In the poem “second daughter’s second day on earth,” Woodson evokes the Black writers and civil rights heroes who were alive on the day of her birth, February 12, 1963: Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and Rosa Parks. She pictures herself as a baby, wondering which of these figures she will grow up to most resemble: “I do not know if these hands will become/ Malcolm’s—raised and fisted / or Martin’s—open and asking” (5).

In the poem “uncle odell,” Woodson describes the death of her mother’s brother Odell, an event that took place before she was born. Odell was hit by a car “while home in South Carolina / on leave from the Navy” (21). Her mother learned of the death while visiting her in-laws in Nelsonville, her own mother phoning her at their house. In the following poem, “good news,” Jacqueline’s mother calls her mother in South Carolina, to announce the birth of her daughter Odella, who has been named after Odell.

Woodson’s mother and father have differing views of the South, a disagreement that finally dissolves their marriage. In “journey,” Woodson’s mother considers the South home, while Woodson’s father considers it a backwards, dangerous place: “You can keep your South, my father says / The way they treated us down there” (29). After one fight, Woodson’s mother takes their children down to Greenville, where the one-year-old Woodson meets her Southern grandparents for the first time. In the poem “the cousins,” Woodson imagines her mother reuniting with her Southern cousins and also with her former Southern self: “She’s MaryAnn Irby again. Georgiana and Gunnar’s / youngest daughter. // She’s home” (34).

Although Woodson’s parents reconcile during this trip, the reconciliation does not last. Woodson’s mother finally leaves Ohio with her children permanently to move in with her parents in South Carolina. In the poem “leaving columbus,” Woodson imagines her mother’s final leave-taking of her father. She describes her mother as a fierce, determined figure (“A woman, nearly six feet tall, straight-backed / and proud, heading down / a cold Columbus street […]”) and her father as a sad and passive one, watching his family leave “[a]s though we were simply guests / leaving Sunday supper” (41).

Section 2 Summary: “the stories of south carolina run like rivers”

This section covers Woodson’s early childhood in South Carolina. Her mother has left her father to move in with Woodson’s grandparents in Nicholtown, a Black neighborhood in Greenville. In “our names,” Woodson and her siblings are treated differently by their Southern relatives, less as individuals and more as members of a tribe: “In South Carolina, we become / The Grandchildren / Gunnar’s Three Little Ones” (45).

Woodson comes to love her Southern grandparents, Gunnar and Georgiana. Gunnar is a tall, charismatic man who works as a foreman at a printing press, where he presides over many White people. He is popular in the Nicholtown neighborhood, and Woodson and her siblings learn to call him Daddy. Georgiana is a Jehovah’s Witness, who draws her grandchildren into Bible studies and regular religious meetings. She works as a cleaning lady in a White neighborhood. In “daywork,” Woodson and her siblings tend to their grandmother when she comes home from her exhausting days at work: “We fill a dishpan with warm water, pour / the salts in, swirl it around carefully / carry it to her feet” (56).

Woodson also loves the sense of community in her neighborhood, and the rich fertile landscape of the South. At the same time, the South is where she first begins to experience racial prejudice. She notices that her mother avoids certain department stores in downtown Greenville because of bigoted White store owners. In the poem “how to listen 2,” Woodson and her siblings are “always followed around / just because we’re brown” (82). She also listens to her mother discussing peaceful protest strategies with her friend and cousin Dorothy, who is a regular marcher and organizer. In “the training,” Dorothy describes “trainings [that] take place in the basements of churches / and the back rooms of stores” where Black people “learn / how to change the South without violence” (76).

Woodson’s mother is restless in the South, as her siblings have all moved or are about to move to New York City. New York City is widely seen among Woodson’s family and community as a land of freedom and opportunity, a sentiment Woodson underscores in “the leavers”: “They say the City is a place where diamonds / speckle the sidewalk. Money / falls from the sky” (93). Woodson’s mother begins to make regular trips to New York City herself, leaving her children home with their grandparents. While she is gone, Woodson and her siblings fall more and more under the influence of their strict, religious grandmother. Their grandmother forbids them to play very much with the other neighborhood children, closely monitors their dress and behavior, and makes them study the Bible or attend church meetings almost every night of the week.

Woodson and her siblings receive a letter from their mother, telling them both that they will all be moving to New York City soon as a family and that they are about to have a younger sibling. Their grandfather is meanwhile bedridden with a chronic cough, now too ill to go to his job. In “new york baby,” Woodson cares for her grandfather and tries to imagine what it will be like to meet her new sibling once her mother returns: “I want to know whose baby girl I’ll be / when my mother’s new baby comes, born where / the sidewalks sparkle and me just a regular girl” (135).

Woodson’s mother returns to South Carolina, bringing her new baby, Roman. In “leaving greenville,” Woodson struggles with leaving the South and her family there: “My mother tucks us back into our bed whispering / We have a home up North now // I am too sleepy to tell her that Greenville is home” (137). In “roman,” Woodson also takes a dislike to her new baby brother, who is “pale and quiet and wide-eyed”: “I want to send it back to wherever / babies live before they get here” (138).

Sections 1-2 Analysis

The two opening sections of the book cover the beginnings of Woodson’s life, and also establish some of the book’s central themes. One of these themes is the meaning of home, and the pull of different homes in one family. Woodson is born in Columbus, Ohio, near her paternal grandparents, who have a proud sense of their ancestry and accomplishments. Woodson’s father wants Woodson and her siblings to excel like others in their paternal family line, and to escape being treated like second-class citizens. He sees the South as a place to avoid, because of its history of overt racial bigotry. However, this view leaves little room for Woodson’s mother, MaryAnn, who was born in the South and misses her own family there.

Woodson’s mother and father eventually separate over their differing ideas of home. For Woodson’s father, home is a place where you learn to leave your mark on the world. Home reaches back into the past, towards his accomplished ancestors, and into the future, towards his children’s projected accomplishments in the world. For Woodson’s mother, home has more to do with immediate family and comfort. She is aware of racial prejudice and segregation in the South, but this awareness does not negate her need to be around the landscape, culture, and people she knows. Even while she is the one to leave the marriage, she is a more accommodating and less confrontational character than Woodson’s father. While Woodson’s father wants his children to stand up to racial bullying and prejudice, Woodson’s mother instructs them not to call attention to themselves. In “greenville, south carolina, 1963,” Woodson highlights her mother’s stance: “Step off the curb if a white person comes toward you / don’t look them in the eye. Yes sir. No sir. / My apologies” (31)

Woodson is still a baby when her mother leaves her father, taking Woodson and her siblings to a new life in South Carolina. Woodson is therefore too young to remember her father or really to miss him, unlike her older siblings. Even so, her father’s attitude and influence can be felt in Woodson’s sense of history: her family history, and also the larger history of Black people in America. Woodson imagines herself as a newborn baby surrounded not only by her immediate family, but also by Black revolutionaries and civil rights leaders, such as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In “second daughter’s second day on earth,” Woodson wonders if she will grow up to be a peaceful revolutionary, like King, or a more confrontational one, like Malcom X: “I do not know if these hands will become / Malcolm’s—raised and fisted / or Martin’s—open and asking” (5).

This question of how to be a revolutionary is another theme in the book, as different authority figures in Woodson’s life give her varying advice on how to cope with racism. In “south carolina at war,” her maternal grandfather, like her father, tells Woodson to fight back: “Be ready to die, my grandfather says / for everything you believe in” (73). Her maternal grandmother Georgiana, like her mother MaryAnn, prefers that Woodson try to fit in and be respectable, and has strict rules about language, dress, and comportment. These two different strategies find a common point in the peaceful protest movement, in which Woodson’s mother and her friends take part. In “the training,” Woodson mentions this movement, where Black people take up public spaces traditionally reserved for White people, neither backing down nor allowing themselves to be drawn into a fight: “They learn / how to change the South without violence” (76).