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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
This was poetic, structurally, with allusions and fragments coming together to sketch a portrait of people and a place. The people remained a bit unknowable; the place -- Brooklyn in the 1970s -- was more vivid. I'm still thinking about the opening claim: "I know now that what is tragic isn't the moment. It's the memory." I'm not sure I agree -- quite a few people's stories ended tragically, and the moment was at least as terrible for them as the memory would be for those who survived.
Woodson skillfully captures the quotidian sexual assaults made on teenage girls, and how girls have to normalize and minimize them to preserve their youthful joy.
I know I should only critique the book I read, and not the one I wanted, but in some ways, this felt like the sketch for a series of much longer stories. I'm still deciding how I feel about getting only the flashes and scenes, rather than the detailed narrative of a more traditional novel. I have to admit that the overall effect was powerful, and my interest in the prose and the story never wavered. But I would have liked a bit more!
Woodson skillfully captures the quotidian sexual assaults made on teenage girls, and how girls have to normalize and minimize them to preserve their youthful joy.
I know I should only critique the book I read, and not the one I wanted, but in some ways, this felt like the sketch for a series of much longer stories. I'm still deciding how I feel about getting only the flashes and scenes, rather than the detailed narrative of a more traditional novel. I have to admit that the overall effect was powerful, and my interest in the prose and the story never wavered. But I would have liked a bit more!
I started out loving this one as much as the House on Mango Street. I didn’t love the end as much, but it is still a lovely, hard book about growing up as a brown girl in America.
Very well written, and it reads like a memoir. Beautiful story.
A shorter read that's chock full of things to think about. I have immediate family from New York, so I was excited to read this book from the perspective of NY being a second home to me. This book was emotional, thoughtful, funny, heart wrenching, sad, triggering, and triumphant. Though it is a short story, I found myself really understanding the perspective of each character. I felt the emotion of Woodson's words in the book. I will say I found myself wanting more, wishing there was more to the story, maybe a epilogue with a quick overview of what really happened later on. However, I enjoyed the book.
I would say 3.5 ⭐️
It is a great coming of age book about all that the characters have to go through as black girls in Brooklyn.
A slice of life book so easy to read that I finished it in one hour! I don’t think it is going to remain in my mind for too long, but I liked it, the author crafted a good story ✨
It is a great coming of age book about all that the characters have to go through as black girls in Brooklyn.
A slice of life book so easy to read that I finished it in one hour! I don’t think it is going to remain in my mind for too long, but I liked it, the author crafted a good story ✨
More of a 3.5.
It's an adult novel, but it's really more of an poem about black girlhood during the 1970s (the dangers and the closeness). It's short, but I put the book down and came back to it later, so some details from earlier were fuzzy for me. There's not the depth of character you expect with a novel, but beautiful language and sketches of the time and the personal diary of August who is dealing with losing her mother and gaining a trio of friends when her family moves to New York. Lovely, but gauzy. Loved it while reading it, but outside of a few scenes and themes, it evaporates from the brain oddly fast.
It's an adult novel, but it's really more of an poem about black girlhood during the 1970s (the dangers and the closeness). It's short, but I put the book down and came back to it later, so some details from earlier were fuzzy for me. There's not the depth of character you expect with a novel, but beautiful language and sketches of the time and the personal diary of August who is dealing with losing her mother and gaining a trio of friends when her family moves to New York. Lovely, but gauzy. Loved it while reading it, but outside of a few scenes and themes, it evaporates from the brain oddly fast.
A lyrical novella that was equal parts tragedy and childhood joy, dance and tears, family and foes. I do think that if the author had explored more about the parental relationships and spent more time with the friends the result might have been even more impactful.
The prose of this book was absolutely beautiful. A simple enough story about life growing up in Brooklyn as a young black girl in the 1970s - but written so beautifully that I couldn't stop reading! Heartbreak and growing up all written with such honesty. Great read.