Finishing Brown Girl Dreaming

I enjoyed Brown Girl Dreaming, for the most part. I found the style of it, being written in verse, very interesting. It made scenes and emotions easier to picture for me. After moving around a few times in Ohio and then to South Carolina, Jackie and her siblings finally join their mother in New York City. Jackie and her siblings were not all that thrilled to be moving from Greenville. They were pretty happy there, and a lot of the time, Jackie wrote, how she wished those moments in Greenville with her grandparents and siblings would go on for eternity. However, I think it is in New York, where Jackie settles in and really discovers who she wants to be: a writer. She drops glimpses of it throughout the book, ultimately leading up to her creating her first book (“The Butterfly Book” I believe) and finally earns praise from one of her teachers telling her that she is a writer. She is finally able to get out of her sister’s shadow of brilliance and find her own brilliance in words, as her brother found brilliance on the stage singing. Two parts that I thought were pivotal in Jackie’s life that were very sad, were when her brother Roman has to go to the hospital for lead poisoning, and her grandfather, also known as Daddy, dies. Jackie was very close to her grandfather, and he even told her that she was his favorite when he was sick. Due to her grandfather’s death, her grandmother comes up to New York to live with them. At this time I think this is where Jackie really embraces herself and the way she was raised. She starts to be herself and talks about embracing the "Power to the People" and is inspired by Angela Davis. I thought the last few pages were really nice where she talks about what she believes, dreams, and becoming who she wants to be. I thought the last few pages were beautiful, especially the way they were written in verse, and really put a nice touch on the end of the book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis