bkmuse7 's review for:

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

5.0

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So many connections to this book. I currently live near Columbus, so I'm familiar with the Ohio landscape she describes in the beginning -- it's Buckeye country, Nelsonville and southeast Ohio, how rivers shape the landscape of SE Ohio. And I grew up in the South, just a few years after Woodson. Georgia instead of South Carolina. And I'm not African-American, so in some ways a vastly different experience. But so many things are familiar -- especially the foods, the extended family (especially grandparents), the views (sometimes real and sometimes the prejudice of the unknown) of the South and of the North, from that other point of view. And the forever friend? My best friend from childhood, Mary, seems to echo Woodson's friendship with Maria. That intensity of connection at a young age can last a very long time.

Apart from my own connections with the book -- it's wonderful. Beautifully written, genuine, moving, real.