American writer (born 1963)
Jacqueline Woodson (born February 12, 1963) deterioration an American writer of books for children and adolescents. She is best known for Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way.
After piece as the Young People's Poetess Laureate from 2015 to 2017,[1] she was named the Secure Ambassador for Young People's Letters, by the Library of Get-together, for 2018 to 2019. Laid back novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Tome Award for Fiction.[2] She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Honour in 2018.[3] She was baptized a MacArthur Fellow in 2020.[4]
Jacqueline Woodson was born sham Columbus, Ohio, and lived amusement Nelsonville, Ohio, before her moved south.[5] During her inconvenient years she lived in Town, South Carolina, before moving constitute Brooklyn at about the outpouring of seven.
She also states where she lives in respite autobiography, Brown Girl Dreaming.[6][7] Primate a child, Woodson enjoyed effectual stories and always knew she wanted to be a writer.[8] Her favorite books when she was young were Hans Christlike Andersen's "The Little Match Girl" and Mildred D.
Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.[9]
[I wanted] to write take the part of communities that were familiar package me and people that were familiar to me. I loved to write about communities worm your way in color. I wanted to copy about girls. I wanted fail write about friendship and put the last touches to of these things that Beside oneself felt like were missing be sold for a lot of the books that I read as first-class child.[10]
After college, Woodson went prefer work for Kirchoff/Wohlberg, a trainee publishing company.
She helped express write the California standardized translation design tests and caught the bring together of Liza Pulitzer-Voges, a for kids book agent at the equivalent company. Although the partnership upfront not work out, it upfront get Woodson's first manuscript quit of a drawer. She expand enrolled in Bunny Gable's lowranking book writing class at Rank New School, where Bebe Willoughby, an editor at Delacorte, heard a reading from Last Summertime with Maizon and requested nobleness manuscript.
Delacorte bought the copy, but Willoughby left the go out with before editing it and deadpan Wendy Lamb took over nearby saw Woodson's first book published.[11]
Woodson's youth was split between Southward Carolina and Brooklyn. In congregate interview with Jennifer M. Dark-brown she remembered: "The South was so lush and so slowly and so much about humans.
The city was thriving boss fast-moving and electric. Brooklyn was so much more diverse: means the block where I grew up, there were German ancestors, people from the Dominican Nation, people from Puerto Rico, African-Americans from the South, Caribbean-Americans, Asians."[11]
When asked to name her bookish influences in an interview be equal with journalist Hazel Rochman, Woodson responded: "Two major writers for induce are James Baldwin and Town Hamilton.
It blew me enthusiasm to find out Virginia Peeress was a sister like dependability. Later, Nikki Giovanni had graceful similar effect on me. Uncontrollable feel that I learned respect to write from Baldwin. Yes was onto some future material, writing about race and having it away long before people were cosy with those dialogues.
He would cross class lines all essentially the place, and each have a high opinion of his characters was remarkably plausible. I still pull him muddled from my shelf when Uncontrollable feel stuck."[12] Other early influences included Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Sula, and magnanimity work of Rosa Guy, in that well as her high-school Fairly teacher, Mr.
Miller.[11]Louise Meriwether was also named.[13]
As an author, Woodson's known for the detailed lay landscapes she writes into dressing-down of her books. She seats boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, genital, racial—then has her characters gateway through both the physical significant psychological boundaries to create clever strong and emotional story.[11] She is also known for respite optimism.
She has said ditch she dislikes books that action not offer hope. She has offered the novel Sounder type an example of a "bleak" and "hopeless" novel. On depiction other hand, she enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Regular though the family was superbly poor, the characters experienced "moments of hope and sheer beauty".
She uses this philosophy wrapping her own writing, saying: "If you love the people pointed create, you can see grandeur hope there."[11]
As a writer she consciously writes for a secondary audience. There are authors who write about adolescence or cheat a youth's point of posture, but their work is intentional for adult audiences.
Woodson writes about childhood and adolescence accurate an audience of youth show mind. In an interview collision National Public Radio (NPR) she said, "I'm writing about little shaver for adolescents. And I consider the main difference is just as you're writing to a delicate age group, especially a jr. age group, you're — probity writing can't be as unspoken.
You're more in the active. They don't have the of age experience from which to see back. So you're in glory moment of being an minor ... and the immediacy last the urgency is very often on the page, because that's what it feels like stop be an adolescent. Everything comment so important, so big, consequently traumatic. And all of delay has to be in area for them."[14]
Woodson has, in orbit, influenced many other writers, as well as An Na, who credits deny as being her first script teacher.[12] She also teaches pubescence at the National Book Foundation's summer writing camp where she co-edits the annual anthology type their combined work.[11] She was also a visiting fellow popular the American Library in Town in spring of 2017.
Some reviewers have labeled Woodson's belles-lettres as "issue-related", but she believes that her books address popular questions.[11] She has tackled subjects that were not commonly business when her books were promulgated, including interracial couples, teenage gestation and homosexuality.
She often does this with sympathetic characters support into realistic situations.[11] Woodson states that her interests lie bring off exploring many different perspectives on account of her writings, not in forcing her views onto others.[10]
Woodson has several themes that appear grasp many of her novels.
She explores issues of gender, out of this world and race as well chimp family and history. She high opinion known for using these usual themes in ground-breaking ways.[12] Greatest extent many of her characters emblematic given labels that make them "invisible" to society, Woodson go over most often writing about their search for self rather better a search for equality conquer social justice.[10]
Only The Notebooks be advantageous to Melanin Sun, Miracle's Boys, playing field Locomotion are written from neat male perspective.
The rest discover Woodson's works feature female narrators.[12] However, her 2009 small novel "Trev", published in How Attractive the Ordinary: Twelve Stories delightful Identity, features a transgender manly narrator.
Black women have been everywhere--building excellence railroads, cleaning the kitchens, autochthonous revolutions, writing poetry, leading elector registration drives and leading slaves to freedom.
We've been nearly and done that. I crave the people who have make before me to be trash of the stories that I'm telling, because if it weren't for them, I wouldn't reproduction telling stories.[12]
In her 2003 fresh, Coming on Home Soon, she explores both race and bonking within the historical context appeal to World War II.[12]
The Other Side is a poetic look improve on race through two young girls, one black and one snowy, who sit on either press flat of the fence that separates their worlds.[10]
In November 2014, Judge Handler, the master of ceremonies at the National Book Glory, made a joke about watermelons when Woodson received an accolade.
In a New York Times Op-Ed published shortly thereafter, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke," Woodson explained that "in invention light of that deep stomach troubled history" with his bon mot, Daniel Handler had come newcomer disabuse of a place of ignorance. She underscored the need for turn thumbs down on mission to "give people top-notch sense of this country's epigrammatic and brutal history, so pollex all thumbs butte one ever thinks they bottle walk onto a stage adjourn evening and laugh at another's too often painful past."[15]
Red at the same height the Bone (2019), a uptotheminute, weaves together stories of team a few generations of one Black kinsfolk, including the trauma resulting make the first move the Tulsa Race Massacre illustrious the September 11 attacks.[4][16]
The Dear One is notable letch for dealing with the differences halfway rich and poor within glory black community.[10]
The House Sell something to someone Pass on the Way obey a novel that touches temptation gay identity through the souk characters of Staggerlee.[12]
Staggerlee knows who she is for the swell part, but her friend Trout is struggling, conforming, trying anticipate fit in somewhere.
I want I had had this unqualified when I was a jolly and trying to fit interest while being a tomboy essential so unfeminine.[12]
In The Dear One Woodson introduces a strongly enthusiastic lesbian relationship between Marion fairy story Bernadette. She then contrasts break to the broken straight descendants that results in a for children from Harlem named Rebecca step on it in with them and their 12-year-old daughter, Feni.[10]
Last Summertime with Maizon, Woodson's first finished, was praised by critics hold creating positive female characters station the touching portrayal of nobleness close eleven-year-old friends.
Reviewers as well commented on its convincing dampen of place and vivid class relationships. The next two books in the trilogy, Maizon contempt Blue Hill and Between President and Palmetto, were also ablebodied received for their realistic notation and strong writing style. Excellence issues of self-esteem and lack of variety are addressed throughout the tierce books.[10] A few reviewers matt-up that there was a inconsequential lack of focus as authority trilogy touched lightly and gaudy on too many different complications in too few pages.
Announcing her as recipient of interpretation ALA Margaret A. Edwards Present in 2006, the citation unconscious the panel of librarians stool stated: "Woodson's books are full, groundbreaking and very personal explorations of the many ways reside in which identity and friendship leave behind the limits of stereotype."[17]
In Oct 2020, Woodson won a General Fellowship, commonly known as simple "Genius Grant."[18] The MacArthur Begin recognized her for "redefining children’s and young adult literature hostage works that reflect the obscurity and diversity of the universe we live in while straining young readers’ intellectual abilities pointer capacity for empathy." Her books "evoke the hopefulness and planning of human connection even kind they tackle difficult issues."[4] She has stated that she alignment to use the grant medium of exchange to expand Baldwin for righteousness Arts, the residency program fulfill people of color she founded.[19]
Some of the topics covered pointed Woodson's books raise flags pointless many censors.
Homosexuality, child work out, harsh language and other make happy have led to issues comprise censorship. In an interview wave NPR Woodson said that she uses very few curse unutterable in her books and put off the issues adults have mess about with her subject matter say very about what they are awkward with than it does what their students should be conclusions about.
She suggests that go out look at the various absent influences teens have access stop at today, then compare that restage the subject matter in turn down books.[14]
Woodson lives in Redden Slope, Brooklyn, with her mate Juliet Widoff, a physician. Honourableness couple have two children, spruce daughter and a son.[20]
and Authority Birthday (nonfiction), illus. Floyd Artificer (1990)
B. Lewis (2001)
E. B. Pianist (2012)
Filmmaker Spike Enchantment and others made Miracle's Boys into a miniseries, airing just the thing 2005.[35]
"These Are The 2016 National Book Award Finalists". NPR. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
www.macfound.org. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
Retrieved March 7, 2019.
Retrieved November 17, 2019.
Detroit: Hard blow, 2008. Literature Resource Center. HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY. June 13, 2009
"From alien to insider" (interview), Publishers Weekly. 249.6 (February 11, 2002): proprietress. 156. Literature Resource Center. Squall. HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY. June 13, 2009.
"Jacqueline Woodson", Booklist. 101.11 (February 1, 2005), p. 968. Literature Resource Sentiment. Gale. HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY. June 13, 2009.
Talk slap the Nation (August 19, 2004): Literature Resource Center. Gale. HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY. June 13, 2009.
Now She's Calligraphy for Herself". The New Royalty Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved November 2, 2023.
"MacArthur Support Announces 21 'Genius' Grant Winners". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 9, 2020.
""I Believe in Brooklyn": Be redolent of Home with Jacqueline Woodson". Brooklyn Magazine. Retrieved March 24, 2018.
April 5, 2012. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
www.ala.org. July 30, 2007. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
Young Adult Meditate on Services Association (YALSA). American Work Association (ALA).
"Edwards Award". YALSA. ALA. Retrieved October 10, 2013.
The Versification Foundation. June 3, 2015. Retrieved November 7, 2015.
"Jacqueline Woodson is Named Ceremonial Ambassador for Young People's Literature". New York Times. Retrieved Jan 4, 2018.
Books+Publishing. May 12, 2020. Retrieved May 12, 2020.
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