15 Dec / Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson [in Library Journal]
*STARRED REVIEW
August, an Ivy League-pedigreed, peripatetic anthropologist who studies death in the farthest reaches of the world, returns home to Brooklyn to bury her father. A chance subway meeting with a childhood friend plunges August back into memories of another Brooklyn of the 1970s, when she was 8, her brother 4. Newly arrived from Tennessee, they were lost without a mother, left alone by a father working hard to support and protect his remaining family.
August comes of age as part of a quartet of local girls, along with Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi; amidst their dreams of becoming a lawyer, dancer, actress, each must fight the too-eager boys, the abusive men, and the suffocating expectations designed to ensnare their vibrant determination to survive – and achieve.
Following Brown Girl Dreaming, which won the young adult 2014 National Book Award, Jacqueline Woodson’s first adult novel in 20 years is a revelatory record of memory lost and found, of girlhood examined from adulthood, of families born and families chosen, of mutable relationships and everlasting bonds. Narrator Robin Miles’s rich elocution adds nuanced depth to Woodson’s already magnificent prose. A gorgeous, necessary acquisition for every library.
Review: “Audio,” Library Journal, December 1, 2016
Readers: Adult
Published: 2016