First of all, it doesn’t happen every day that a high profile writer publishes a work set in our neighborhood. Jacqueline Woodson is a New York Times bestselling author, who had previously published two dozen acclaimed children, middle grade and YA books, and won a National Book Award (think Oscar for books) for her memoir “Brown Girl Dreaming.”
Her novel “Another Brooklyn,” is set in Bushwick where Woodson grew up herself. It is such a sensory ride through the beautiful and the terrifying of “growing up a Girl” in Bushwick that at times it made me wonder if the publishers got the genre right. “Another Brooklyn” feels like a 200-page-long poem, or mediation on girlhood, friendship and coming of age at the edge of poverty.
I read “Another Brooklyn” in one sitting, in half a plane ride to L.A. drinking it all in, feeling the joys and the pains, having my heart wrenched as well as tears about to burst several times.
