Another Brooklyn in Around the World in 80 Books

Mar 28, 2018 Lindsey Z rated it really liked it

**4.5 stars**

"For a long time, my mother wasn't dead yet," begins Woodson's heart-gripping meditation about growing up as a Black girl in Brooklyn who was "not poor but lived on the edge of poverty." This short yet utterly mesmerizing, stream of consciousness style confession about all the ways in which August, the narrator, remained in denial about her mother's death for years completely took my breath away. I couldn't stop reading this story. There's no identifiable story arc here other than t **4.5 stars**

"For a long time, my mother wasn't dead yet," begins Woodson's heart-gripping meditation about growing up as a Black girl in Brooklyn who was "not poor but lived on the edge of poverty." This short yet utterly mesmerizing, stream of consciousness style confession about all the ways in which August, the narrator, remained in denial about her mother's death for years completely took my breath away. I couldn't stop reading this story. There's no identifiable story arc here other than the fact that August comes back to Brooklyn after years of practicing anthropology abroad; she's "dreamed [herself] out" of the Brooklyn of drug addicts, sexual objectification and assault of girls and women, hopelessness, and despair. Woodson knew this Brooklyn as a young girl and it shows: the atmosphere of the novel's setting is so sharply rendered. Mired by her situation as a young African American in 1970s Brooklyn, August's only spiritual freedom is in the friendships she makes with Angela, Gigi, and Sylvia. This foursome depend on each other not only for survival but for liberation, and their love is fierce and uplifting, the anchor of both August's life and the storyline.

The backbone of August's sometimes seemingly random musings is this refrain: "This is memory." You'll find that this novel breaks many conventions in that it does not follow a linear plot nor moves from developed scene to developed scene. Instead, we get fragments of August's recollection of her childhood: moving from Tenneessee to Brooklyn with her brother and father once her mother starts seeing the ghost of her brother Clyde, falling in love with her friend group, falling in love with a boy who leaves her because she won't have sex with him, watching her neighbor's children get taken away from her, witnessing heartbreaking drug use within her neighborhood on a daily basis, learning about and anguishing over the Biafran and Vietnam wars, coming to the realization that living in dark skin means a different future for her, and fashioning her identity and values without a model. August's story reminded me of Lucille Clifton's poem "won't you celebrate with me," in which she proudly proclaims at the end, "come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me /and has failed." Woodson's story is a pure celebration of Black girl survival.

My only critique of this novel is that it felt incomplete to me. I wanted so much more. And I think there were some more story lines and time periods that Woodson could have fleshed out, like the reunions between August and the people of her past when she returns to Brooklyn. But if I imagine this text to be a stroke of unadulterated expression in which Woodson did not put down her pen once she began writing, then Another Brooklyn is genius. Please, read her words about a world that many of us can only begin to fathom, let alone understand. ...more

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