Another Brooklyn Summary
Jacqueline Woodson

Another Brooklyn Overview

Memory is the greatest melody of Jacqueline Woodson's poetic novel, Another Brooklyn. The main character, August, spends her childhood years on the suspect streets of New York City looking for a mentally ill mother who will never come. August's penetrating understandings of race, class, sexuality, friendship, family, and most importantly, memory, hurl this narrative directly into the reader's soul. Woodson believes that memory trumps the definitive moment of a circumstance, because recollection and perspective are what shape identity; seemingly real and true occurrences are ultimately subjective, and that is why August jumps from future to past and back again. She yearns for that emotional spot, where a young person begins to realize how gritty and beautiful life can be through particular angles. Woodson ends the novel, "At some point, all of this, everything and everyone, became memory," which demonstrates the undeniable faith that remembrance is housed in the thoughts of the individual. No matter what happens in life, the singular and personal ideations are more candid, pivotal, and sculpting.