>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Good afternoon,
everybody and welcome
to the National Book Festival.
My name is Sydney [inaudible]
and I'm the Social Issues
Editor at The Washington Post.
We've been a charter
sponsor for the book festival
since its conception in 2001.
I'm especially excited to introduce
our next author, Jacqueline Woodson.
I deeply related to her
book published this summer,
Brown Girl Dreaming.
I was also a brown girl
dreaming born just 4 months
after Ms. Woodson.
I spent a good deal of time thinking
what it has meant to be part
of the generation that
grew up during and directly
after the Civil Rights Movement.
Did we enter a world in which the
impossible was made possible for us?
Or did we grow up in a world
which the horizons were
actually more limited
than we imagined them
to be as children?
I think it was actually
a bit of both.
But while this book certainly speaks
to the experience of brown girls
like me and Ms. Woodson,
I agree with reviewer
Veronica Chambers [phonetic],
it that it could easily
be titled Girl Dreaming.
It's a memoir of childhood wonder
and imagination and friendship
and the importance of family.
And it's told so beautifully in
poetry, the language of the heart.
Now about the author.
Jacqueline has written
more than 20 books.
Some of the most notable include
Newberry Honor Medal winners,
Show Way, Feathers, and
After Tupac and D Foster.
And then the Coretta Scott King
Award-winning Miracle's Boys.
Woodson is known for
exploring important themes
in her works including
issues of gender, race,
class, family, and history.
Brown Girl Dreaming recalls
a story of her childhood
as an African-American girl
amid the Civil Rights Movement.
For her dedication to her children
and young adult literature,
Jacqueline recently received
the Margaret A. Edwards Award
for Lifetime Achievement in 2006.
Without further ado, ladies and
gentlemen, Jacqueline Woodson.
[ Clapping ]
>> Thanks so much, Sydney, for
that beautiful introduction.
I'm excited just to be here.
I am so happy to be back in D.C.
in this room and not outside.
It's -- I love this festival.
I love how passionate D.C. is about
books and how people come out.
I was a little concerned about
the Labor Day weekend thing
and the possibility of
speaking to a near empty room
because I live in New York.
And people were leaving town.
So I [inaudible] the
same thing was --
would be happening here but
it's so nice to be here.
It's so nice to be able to
come finally talk about a book
that I worked on for
a long, long time.
Which is Brown Girl Dreaming.
And as Sydney said in her beautiful
introduction, it's a memoir.
And I decided to write
it after my mom died.
My mom died suddenly and before
her, my grandmother had died.
And those were the 2
women who had raised me.
And I realized that the people I
loved were becoming ancestors really
quickly and that, if I didn't start
telling the story there would come a
point where there was no one to ask.
And I think it's so important
for all of us as writers,
as people who have stories to
tell and are waiting to tell them.
You know what I learned very quickly
is tomorrow's not guaranteed.
And so today, now is the time
to begin to put those stories
on the page and get
them out to the world.
So when I started writing Brown
Girl Dreaming I went back to Ohio
where my aunt, my dad's sister lives
and I asked her all these questions.
She's a genealogist, thankfully.
So she had a lot of answers for me.
And then I went down South to
Greenville, South Carolina,
and interviewed my cousins and
aunts who were still living.
And then I came back to New York.
So I was born in Ohio, moved
to Greenville, South Carolina.
Moved from Greenville, South
Carolina, to Brooklyn, New York
and went back and forth
between Greenville
and Brooklyn for many years.
And then finally settled in the
Bushville [phonetic] section
of the Brooklyn and learned that I
was pretty late on that I was part
of the negro migration of the
people who left the oppressive South
for better chances for their
children for the most part.
So my mother brought
us to New York City.
Some people went to Chicago.
Some people went to L.A.
Different parts of the country
to build their foundations
for their children.
And my mother's concern was that
we wouldn't get the opportunities
in a place that has so recently
gotten rid of the Jim Crow Laws.
And the Jim Crow Laws, even though
they were supposedly not supposed
to be part of the atmosphere
and were still very much a part
of the South way, way into the '70s.
So this is from Brown Girl Dreaming.
The Candy Lady.
This is for Aaron because
he wanted --
he's 7 and he wanted
me to read something
that he might be interested in.
So I'm thinking candy lady
might be interesting to him.
On Fridays, my grandfather takes
us to the Candy Lady's house.
Raise your hand if you have a
Candy Lady in your neighborhood
or did when you were little.
It's so interesting
because it's cross cultural.
I actually thought the Candy Lady
just existed in black neighborhoods
but I've met so many other
people who had Candy Ladies,
you know they have [inaudible]
their house or their apartment,
but they have a room
designated to candy.
And you go in there with your little
allowance and you get to pick candy
and then you would envy the
kids who actually lived there
because they lived with
all that candy all the time
but you know they can't touch it.
So anyway, the Candy Lady.
On Fridays, my grandfather takes us
to the Candy Lady's house even
though my grandmother worries he was
going to be the cause of our teeth
rotting right out of our heads.
But my grandfather just laughs.
He makes us open our
mouths to show the strong,
[inaudible] teeth we've inherited
from his side of the family.
The 3 of us stand there,
our mouths opened wide,
strong white teeth inside.
And my grandmother has
to nod, has to say,
they're lucky before
sending us on our way.
The Candy Lady's small living room
is filled with shelves and shelves
with chocolate bars and gum drops,
Good N' Plenty, and Jujubes,
Moon Pies, vanilla
wafers, lollipops,
and long red licorice strings.
So much candy that's
it hard to choose
until my grandfather
says get what you want
but I'm getting myself
some ice cream.
Then the Candy Lady who is gray
haired and never smiles disappears
into another room and returns a few
minutes later with a wafer cone,
pale yellow lemon chiffon
ice cream dripping from it.
Outside though it's late in the
afternoon, the sun is beating down
and the idea of lemon chiffon
ice cream cooling us even
for a few minutes makes us all
start saying at once, me too, Daddy.
Me too. Me too, Daddy.
Me too. The walk home from the Candy
Lady's house is a quiet one except
for the sound of melting
ice cream being slurped
up fast before it slides past
our wrist on down our arms
and onto the hot, dry road.
So I've known I wanted to
be a writer since I was 7.
And then that's pretty much since
I started writing and realized
that words -- that letters makes
words and words make sentences
and sentences make paragraphs.
And it fascinated me.
Stories fascinated me and I knew
that one could create
a story fascinated me.
So I got in trouble a lot for lying
because I didn't know back then
that lying was my way
of telling stories.
And I had a teacher who said
that instead of lying write it
down because if you write it
down it's not a lie anymore.
It's fiction.
[ Laughter ]
And not only do you not
get punished for telling it
but people actually pay you for it
which was phenomenal to me the idea
that you can -- that lies can
be legitimized in that way.
So I've actually written
what 31 lies now
and gotten some [inaudible] praise
for which I am very, very grateful.
And I think writers don't as
[inaudible] so beautifully talking
about and looking back at the
past, remembering that past,
knowing that past but also
keeping your eye on the future.
Remembering where you came from
but also being really aware
of where you're going.
My parents didn't think about
the South once they came
to New York City.
And I think the South was
just too painful for them.
So I -- and I found that a
lot of relatives who were part
of the Great Migration,
they left that part behind
for many, many, many years.
And when I was writing Showaway,
it was the first time my grandmother
really started talking to me
about her past and I think it's
because she knew she wanted
to be moving on to the next place.
So my family was from Greenville,
South Carolina, and my mom went
to Sterling High School
in Greenville.
And this is all Sterling
High School.
My mother leaves to come to New
York City to look for a place for us
to live and these [inaudible]
grandparents.
And because my mom
and dad were separated
and my mother calls
her father, Daddy,
we called my grandfather Daddy.
Sterling High School,
Greenville, South Carolina.
While my mother is
away in New York City,
a fire sweeps through her old
school during the senior dance.
Smoke filled the crowded
room and music stopped.
And students dancing stopped.
And the DJ told them to
quickly leave the building.
The fire lasted all night.
When it was over, my mother's
high school had burned nearly
to the ground.
My mother said it was because
the students had been marching
and the march made some white
people in Greenville mad.
After the fire, the students
weren't allowed to go
to the all white high school.
Instead they had to crowd in
beside their younger sisters
and brothers at the lower school.
In the photos from my mother's high
school yearbook, The Torch 1959,
my mother's smiling beside
her cousin, Dorothy Ann,
and on her other side,
there's Jesse Jackson
who maybe was already dreaming
of one day being the first
brown man to run for President.
And not even the torching of
their school could stop him
or the marchers from
changing the world.
I just think it's so ironic that
their yearbook was called The Torch
and then their high
school got burned down.
Tobacco, summer is over and kids
are chilling in the Southern air.
We see the thin orange of
my grandfather's cigarette
as he makes his way
down the darkened road.
Hear his evening greetings and
the coughing that follows them.
Not enough breath left now
to sing so I sing for him
in my head where only I can hear.
[Singing] When the old [inaudible].
The old people used
to say a pinch of dirt
in the mouth can tell
tobacco's story.
When the crops are ready for
picking, what needs to be left
to grow, what soil is rich enough
for planting, and the patches
of land that need a year of rest.
I did not know yet how sometimes
the earth makes a promise it can
never keep.
Tobacco fields lay fallow.
Crops picked clean.
My grandfather coughs again and the
earth waits for who -- I'm sorry --
for what and who it
will give in return.
So coming -- my life
was an ordinary life.
And I think we all think that
until we take a step back
out of it and look at it.
And see that in every book we
read, what it is the ordinary
on the page becoming
extraordinary somehow.
And that's what literature does.
I think that's why I love it so much
and I think that's why I
was such a slow reader.
I read the same things
over and over again.
And I got in trouble for
reading slowly and blah, blah,
blah but there were some things
too that people didn't know.
I realized many years later I
was reading as a writer, right?
I was reading to understand how
writers got the stories on the page.
And how did they do tag lines?
How did they set them up?
Why am I just focused
[inaudible] about that?
Like what does a writer
just say to make me cry?
And I just loved getting into what
Jan Gardner [phonetic] calls the
dream of fiction.
So I read slowly and I read the
same things again and again.
And I lived my life and my life
which eventually ended
up in Brooklyn.
It was a very ordinary life that now
on the page feels very
different to me.
This is called Swag.
When the kids in my class ask
why I'm not allowed to pledge
to the flag, I tell them
it's against my religion
but don't say I am in a
world but not of the world.
This they would not understand.
Even though my mother's
not a Jehovah Witness,
she makes us follow their
rules and leave the classroom
when the pledge is being said.
Every morning I walk out with
Gina and Allena [phonetic],
the 2 other witnesses in my class.
Sometimes Gina says maybe we should
bring some of the kids inside
who don't know my God said
no other idols before me.
That our God is a jealous God.
Gina is a true believer.
Her Bible opened during
reading time Allena
and I walked [inaudible] witnesses
and this is a part we've
been given to play.
And in one song stage we run free
saying America, the beautiful
and the Star-Spangled
Banner far away
from our fake families
knowing every single word.
Allena and I want,
more than anything,
to walk back into our classrooms --
to walk back into our
classroom press our hands
against our hearts saying
I pledge alliance loud
without our jealous
God looking down on us.
Without our parents finding
out, without our mother's voices
in our heads saying you are
different, chosen, good.
When the pledge is over,
we walk single file back
into the classroom take our
separate, Allena and I far away
from Gina but Gina always
looks back at us as if
to say, I'm watching you.
As if to say, I know.
So, part of my childhood
was being a Jehovah Witness.
And it's interesting because
when I told my family I wanted
to be a writer, we -- they
were very, very concerned.
I always talked about how, you
know, their biggest concern was
that I was never going to
get out of their house.
[Laughter] And I, you know,
so they tried to encourage
me to do other stuff.
Become a teacher, become
a lawyer, do hair.
You know, anything, anything
[inaudible] please get
out of our house.
And so I would lie.
I would say yeah, that's
what I'm going to do.
I'll do something that will
get me a salary but I knew even
as I was saying that writing was the
thing I wanted to do all the time.
And I did.
I started writing when
I was very young.
Wrote through all high school.
Wrote all through college.
Majored in English and still
took whatever job I could
so that I could one day be a writer.
And then I grew up and I had
written all of these books.
And I had -- everything
is autobiographically
to some extent, right?
I always say my work is emotionally
autobiographically even though it's
not -- this is the
autobiographically.
The emotions my characters
had felt are emotions I felt.
I felt and even when I'm writing,
if I don't feel a certain sadness
or a certain laughter then I'm
writing [inaudible] I know the word
is not working.
It's not doing what
it's supposed to do.
So because it was not always
physically autobiographically the
stuff that was happening to my
characters was not happening to me.
And I had never thought
of writing a memoir
because I felt once I wrote
a memoir, everyone will know
where my stories came from.
And then [inaudible].
Oh that's local.
Oh yeah now I get [inaudible].
So [inaudible] stay far away
from the memoir and just put
that emotional stuff into the book.
And then I decided, as
I said after my mom died
to begin to go back on my life.
And I have 2 kids.
I have a 12-year-old
and a 6-year-old.
And their big thing is that
my work is not funny to them.
Not like [inaudible].
So but even [inaudible].
Why can't you write
like [inaudible]?
[Chuckling] So when I went to
write this, I thought I need
to not make my life seem like this
life was just serious, religious,
and you know, back and forth
between South Carolina.
I went into all the detail
that I could remember
that made me [inaudible]
writer today.
So this one is called Music.
Each morning the radio
comes on at 7 o'clock.
Sometimes Michael Jackson is
singing that ABC is easy as 1 2 3.
[Inaudible] in the family stone
of [inaudible] thanking us
for letting them be themselves.
Sometimes it's slower music.
The Five Stair Steps telling us
that things are going to get easier
or The Hollies singing
he ain't heavy.
He's my brother.
My mother lets us choose what music
we wanted to listen to as long
as the word funk doesn't
appear anywhere in the song.
But the summer I am 10, funk is
in every single song that comes
on the cool black radio stations.
So our mother makes us
listen to white ones.
[Laughing] All afternoon,
[inaudible] people think
about Colorado, about
everything being beautiful,
about how we've only
just begun, [laughter].
My sister falls in love with
the singers but I sneak off
to Ria's [phonetic] house
where safe inside in her room
and with the peach shag
carpet and bunk beds,
we can comb our dolls' hair and take
along [inaudible] he's the funkiest
worm in the whole world.
We can dance the funky chicken
and tell imaginary intruders
to get the funk out of
our [laughter] faces.
Say the words so hard and so loud
and so many times it becomes
something different to us.
Something so silly we laugh
just thinking about it.
Funky, funky, funky, we
say it again and again
until the word is just a sound.
Not connected to anything,
good or bad, right or wrong.
Who's like a timekeeper?
[ Clapping ]
Thank you.
So I'm going to end with this
tribute to my mom and I'm going
to kind of my editor's mom,
Ann Paulson [phonetic],
who just moved on to the next place.
And you know, I loved Ann.
She was so full of so
much life and she --
and you know, if she hadn't
born my fabulous editor,
Nancy Paulson wouldn't
be in the world.
And I would so not be here.
[Inaudible].
Fate, faith and reasons.
Everything happens for a
reason, my mother says.
Then tells me how Kay believes
in fate and destiny [inaudible].
Everything that ever
happened was going
to happen couldn't ever be avoided.
The marches down South didn't
just up and start their marching.
It was part of a longer, bigger
plan that maybe belonged to God.
My mother tells me this
as we fold laundry,
white towels separated
from the colored ones.
Each a threat to the other.
And I remember the time I
spilled bleach on the blue towel.
[Inaudible] forever.
The pale pink towel, remembering
when it washed with the red one.
Maybe there is something after
all to the way some people wanted
to remain each to its own kind but
in time, everything fades to red.
Even though us coming to Brooklyn,
my mother says, wasn't some accident
and I can't help thinking
of the birds here.
How they disappeared
in the winter time,
heading South for food
and warmth and shelter.
Heading South to stay alive
passing us on the way.
No accidents, my mother says.
Just fate and faith and reasons.
When I asked my mother what she
believes in, she stops mid-fold
and looks out the back window.
Autumn is full on here and
the sky is bright blue.
I guess I believe in
right now, she says.
And the resurrection and
Brooklyn and the four of you.
Thank you.
[ Clapping ]
We have time.
We have about 9 minutes or 7
minutes at this point for questions.
So if anyone has any question
about anything at all,
if you could just come
up to the mic.
Oh thank you.
[Inaudible].
>> Each kindness, an extraordinary
silence descends over my class
when I read that book and one
of the recurring questions asked
by my students is the
girl in the book you?
>> You know, I -- whenever kids ask
about the, you know, whenever I read
that book to kids, I start
off by asking them how many
of them have ever had
someone be mean to them?
And then everybody
raises their hands.
And then I ask them, how many
of them have ever been
mean to someone else?
And then like 3 raise their
hands and the rest are lying.
And I tell them the rest
are lying and I know --
you know that was part
of writing that book.
At some point, we either
Mya or Chloe.
And there were times when I was
the mean girl but there were times
when I was Chloe and there
were times when I was Mya.
So I think that's the case
for all of us in our lives.
And I always kids to think about the
time when they were be, you know,
even if it was being cranky
with a parent in the morning
or not being kind to a friend
or whatever the unkindness was.
And the time when they
were playing --
I think asking them about
their kindness is really --
does empower them because --
and I think it helps them
[inaudible] become very less
conscience in a way
[inaudible] hopefully.
>> Thank you for that book.
>> Thank you.
[ Clapping ]
>> Any other questions?
Oh okay.
>> What college did you go to?
>> I went to a small liberal
arts college in New York.
And I'm not even going to name
it because I don't want to people
to say let me go there
and be a writer
because I just liked it so much.
So I'm not even giving it
credit for me being here.
Sorry. But there are
some really good schools.
You know, where would I
have gone if I had my dream?
I don't know but I did go to
college and I think you should too.
[ Clapping ]
>> Hi. [Inaudible]
from New York today
or have you been here
for a long time?
>> I came from New York today
and I'm going back home tomorrow
after [inaudible] tomorrow.
You know my daughter's
named for Toshi, right?
My daughter's named for Toshi Reagon
who so and her name is Little Toshi.
So I'm going to see Toshi, Big
Toshi this week and I'm going
to tell her I saw all of y'all.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
[Inaudible] that was the plan.
>> I saw -- I asked
[inaudible] any questions
but will have [inaudible]
-- [inaudible] --
>> Oh my [inaudible].
>> Yeah, so I was asking
if you could --
[ Inaudible ]
>> Oh that's exciting.
>> So having done it already, could
you like maybe go [inaudible]?
>> [Inaudible].
I will so thank you.
So the [inaudible] public library.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Well, you've been
writing so long.
Would you share a little
bit more about the process?
>> About --
>> [Inaudible].
>> You know, Catherine
[inaudible], I think,
said it best about
the writing process
which is thick but [inaudible].
And I think that the hardest thing
for so many writers including myself
when I first started writing
there wasn't all this social media
and all the work that needed
to be done to distract us.
So I, you know, would write for
like 4 or 5 hours before I had kids.
And then lolligag as my
grandmother would say and then,
you know, write some more.
And now my writing process
is very organic process.
I have an idea in my head
and I start writing it down.
And I see where it takes me.
I always say I write
because I have questions not
because I have answers.
And so questions what
does my character want?
And how is he or she
going to get there?
And the book is that question
and then [inaudible] comes
about a whole lot of other
things but I do write every day.
I do read.
You know, of course, if
you're writing fiction,
you have to be reading fiction.
If you're writing poetry, you
have to be reading poetry.
If you're writing fantasy,
the list goes on, and I write.
When I'm not writing, I'm
reading or [inaudible] out loud.
So it's a slow, organic process.
>> If someone offered to make one
of your books a movie,
would you accept that?
>> One of my books now will
be -- movie's being made.
It's a movie by Jonathan
Denny [phonetic].
Miracle Boys was made into
a miniseries by a couple
of different directors
including Spike Lee.
I don't accept it because they
just buy rights to the book.
You know books and
movies are different.
And that's the great
thing about them.
They're -- I'm always a little
alarmed when people compare.
They're like the book
wasn't like the movie.
It was like no, it was a
book and it was a movie.
So, I think, you know you get
different things out of them.
The written word is a thing I love
and I like watching movies too.
So I don't know.
I might be a little more
protective of Brown Girl Dreaming.
I don't who would play in them.
[ Laughter ]
>> Other curiosity.
You said that the writing
process is very slow and organic.
What would you do if you only
had a short amount of time?
>> I'd write faster.
[Laughing] If I only had a
short amount of time to do what?
>> Like to create an act or analysis
on your topic whether
[inaudible] kind of non-fictionish.
>> So you mean for
more critical writing
if I had a short amount of time?
>> Well you know the
story of [inaudible] --
>> Do you know the
stories [inaudible]?
Something like that.
>> The story, what is it called?
>> I don't know [inaudible].
>> It's a really good book.
>> Okay. I have to
admit [inaudible].
I'll look up.
I think, you know, if I only had
a really limited amount of time,
I don't know why that I would
only have a little amount
of time [inaudible] I
procrastinated to the last minute
where I have a lot of time left.
>> I guess.
>> Then I'd write faster and then
I'd ask my editor for an extension.
Thank you.
Last question there.
>> [Inaudible] for little kids?
>> I've written about 6 or
7 books for little kids.
>> [Inaudible].
>> Thank you everyone.
[ Clapping ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov.
[ Silence ]