Jacqueline Woodson: Dreams Come True

Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming, a collection of beautifully wrought poems depicting her childhood in South Carolina and New York, won the 2014 National Book Award for Young People’s Literature. The New York Times said that “This is a book full of poems that cry out to be learned by heart. These are poems that will, for years to come, be stored in our bloodstream.” Much of Woodson’s writing explores the issues of gender, class, and race, as well as family and history, themes she addresses in groundbreaking ways.