Each book I write is a shout into the silence and a prayer and a plea for change.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the author's desire for their writing to invoke change and connect with others in profound ways.
Jacqueline Woodson's quote highlights the powerful role of literature and writing as a means of communication and expression. It reveals how each book serves not only as a personal testament of the author's thoughts and feelings but also as a call to action, inviting readers to reflect and consider possibilities for change in their own lives and the world around them. The metaphor of a 'shout into the silence' signifies the urgency and importance of their message in a world that often overlooks individual voices.
In practice
In a discussion about the impact of literature on society.
'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.
In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
I don't want anyone to walk through the world feeling invisible ever again.
The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.'
I would have written 'Brown Girl Dreaming' if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we've come through.
Someday, our children, and our children’s children, will look at us in the eye and they'll ask us, did we do all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem and leave them a cleaner, safer, more stable world?
Griping isn't the same as creating something. Rebelling isn't rebuilding. Ridiculing isn't replacing. We've taken the world apart but we have no idea what to do with the pieces.
Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt.
I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.
'Movement is life;' and it is well to be able to forget the past, and kill the present by continual change.
We are being wiped off the face of this earth _x000D_ At an extremely alarming rate _x000D_ And even more alarming is the fact _x000D_ That we are not fighting back
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