I love writing for young people. It's the literature that was most important to me, the stories that shaped me and informed my own journey as a writer.
Interpretation
The author expresses the significance of writing for young people, reflecting on how it shaped their own life.
In this quote, Jacqueline Woodson emphasizes the profound impact that literature aimed at young audiences has had on her personal development as a writer. She highlights the importance of storytelling in nurturing young minds, suggesting that the stories they encounter can significantly influence their understanding of the world and their own identities.
In practice
A teacher might use this quote to inspire students to appreciate the literature they read.
'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.
Not everyone has equal abilities, but everyone should have equal opportunity for education.
For her, reading was directly linked to pleasure, not to knowledge or enigmas or constructions or verbal labyrinths.
When I was 13, I started working in a nightclub with Ray Charles. That's the greatest school in the world, the school of the streets. Ray taught me how to read in Braille. He was only two years older than me, but it was like he was 100 years older.
A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
So many young decorators are trying to reinvent the wheel, and the results are sometimes very dubious. They're striving to do things that have never been done before. Quite often it is done without authority, without knowledge, and without a background in taste. They need to be educated about the past, and they need a richer vocabulary.
Literature is the only access to truth we have on this planet.
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