Brown girl dreaming

By Sandra Mikalsen

For this assignment, I will give a literary analysis on one of the many themes from Jaqueline Woodson’s book Brown girl dreaming (2014). The book is written as a memoir about Woodson’s childhood, consisting of a series of poems. Woodson is an African American who grew up in the 1960’s just after the fight for civil rights in the United States, and thus the book is strongly influenced by this movement. Some of the other themes recurring throughout the book is about family and home, religion, friendship and finding your place in the world. 

For my literary analysis I have chosen the theme about family and home. This theme covers a broad spectre of topics from birth to death, abandonment, friendships, religion and conflicts within the family. The book starts off with the telling of Woodson’s birth and an elaboration of her family, which puts the reader straight into Woodson’s life. It also gives us an idea of the book being a memoir of the authors’ life. Her family consists of the Woodson’s on her fathers’ side and the Irby family on her mothers’ side. Even though her parents live together in one place, each of the family sides are living in the opposite part of the country – her father belonging to the north in Ohio, and her mother to the south in Greenville. This creates an issue between Woodson’s parents because each of them wants to live near their own family, and thus causes them to have arguments and fights from time to time (Woodson, 2014, p.26-27). 

Only a year into Woodson’s lifetime her parents decide to separate, and so Woodson and her siblings move to the south with their mother. Woodson describes this separation “as though we were simply guests leaving Sunday supper” (Woodson, 2014, p.40-41), and so her grandfather in Greenville becomes Woodson’s new father figure because, as she puts it, “this is all we know now” (Woodson, 2014, p.50). From this point on, the main focus in the family theme of the book is the Irby-lineage which becomes an important part of Woodson’s life, identity and place of belonging – her home. She develops a strong bond with her grandparents, the grandfather in particular because he seems to understand and accept that Jaqueline is somewhat different from her siblings, but she also loves to hear her grandmother tell stories. The bond between Jaqueline and her grandfather is especially prominent on page 131 as they sit together outside on a cold winter’s night; “My head against my grandfather’s arm … You don’t need words on a night like this. Just the warmth of your grandfather’s arm.”, and also in the poem “what’s left behind” on page 287-288 (Woodson, 2014). 

During their time in Greenville, Woodson is slowly introduced to the Bible and religion. At first she loves to hear her grandmother retell the stories from the Bible and becomes fascinated with storytelling, but later on their religious training becomes more serious. Her grandmother belongs to a religious organization called Jehovah’s witnesses, and thus it is important to her to raise the grandchildren into the same believes. Throughout the book Woodson gives us some clues to her discontent about being a part of Jehovah’s witnesses. Her discontent mostly seems to be because it prevents her to do fun things, such as celebrating Halloween and Christmas or having birthday cupcakes in school (Woodson, 2014, p.164).

Even though friendship itself can be seen as its own theme in the book, it is also considered an important part of Woodson’s family life. After moving to New York with her mother and siblings, she becomes friends with a Spanish neighbour girl named Maria. This friendship is clearly stated in the poem on page 245 (Woodson, 2014) and when Maria and Jaqueline is covering the sidewalks with the words saying “Maria & Jackie Best Friends Forever” (Woodson, 2014, p.242). At page 256 (Woodson, 2014) it becomes clear that the friendship between Maria and Jaqueline is considered more than just a friendship – they see themselves as family; “When I ask Maria where Diana is she says, They’re coming later. This part is just for my family … Yeah, I say. This is only for us. The family.”

How and why use Brown girl dreaming for teaching

For this part of the assignment, I will focus on how and why use Brown girl dreaming in teaching based on competence aims from the English subject curriculum after Year 7 (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013, p.9). 

Because of Woodson’s background as an African American, this book presents an excellent opportunity to give the pupils some cultural input and cross-cultural awareness (Munden & Myhre, 2015, p.106). Based on the competence aim “converse about the way people live and socialise in different cultures in English-speaking countries”, I would divide the class into smaller groups and give each group a specific part from the book for them to converse about, especially parts that shows clear differences in how other cultures live and socialise. Another lesson based on the book could be about using the books structure as a starting point for the pupils to create their own poems (Munden & Myhre, 2015, p.113). By giving the pupils a selection of poems based on the different themes from the book, they could get inspired to write their own poems about a chosen subject they find most relevant to themselves, such as friendship or family. Thus integrating the competence aim about “express oneself creatively inspired by different types of English literature from various sources”. 

To consider the pupils who struggle, I would use one teaching lesson to focus only on reading for pleasure, because extensive reading is important for pupils to improve their reading skills. Also, when the pupils can choose for themselves how many books or how much of the book they want to read, it helps a lot on their motivation for reading (Munden & Myhre, 2015, p.107). Since the pupils can choose how much of the book they want to read, and because the book is written as poems, I can base this lesson on the competence aim “read and understand different types of texts of varying length from different sources”. Still considering the pupils who struggle, another lesson to use could be asking questions about the book or given parts of the book. Simple questions with just one correct answer enables the struggling pupils to contribute orally and experience the joy of having the right answer (Munden & Myhre, 2015, p.118). Such a question could be “Who is Jaqueline’s best friend?”or “What religious organization does Jaqueline and her grandmother belong to?”, thus checking whether the pupils has achieved the aim “understand the main content of texts one has chosen”.

Sources

Munden, J. og A. Myhre (2015). Twinkle Twinkle, English 1-4, 3.ed. Oslo: Cappelen Damm AS

Utdanningsdirektoratet (2013). National Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion, English subject curriculum. Sourced 10.04.16 from http://www.udir.no/kl06/eng1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-7.-arstrinn/?lplang=eng

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Brown Girl Dreaming

Theme in Brown Girl Dreaming

In this blogpost I will start by discussing one of the themes in the book “Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson. Afterwards I will discuss why and how I would use this book in a teaching situation.

The theme I will discuss is how the book handles the notion of family and how Jacqueline sees her own family and her thoughts and feeling about them.

Naturally, Jacqueline´s family is a big part of her memoir, and we get to read about a lot of her family. During the book we read about the different memories of her family and a lot of different aspects of their life. Jacqueline´s memories are both negative and positive concerning her family, something we all can relate to.

Excerpt: ”You don´t need words

on a night like this. Just the warmth

of your grandfather´s arm.

This an example of one of the positive memories Jacqueline writes about in her memoir, in this chapter she is sitting on the porch outside her house with her grandfather.

In another excerpt from the book we get to learn a little about her aunt, that tragically dies at the end of the chapter. We also hear about her uncle who has gone to jail, and how her family copes with that.

The family is also later separated by geography, living in different parts of the country. Jacqueline writes about how her memory of some of her family members starts to fade because of how seldom she sees them. “In all our moving, we´ve forgotten our family in Ohio, forgotten our father´s voice, the slow drawl of his voice…”

Jacqueline sees herself in her own family, and often compares herself to the rest of her family. Quite normal for a young girl, pupils would most likely relate.

To conclude, in my opinion the themes of family in “Brown Girl Dreaming” is showed to be multifaceted.  Her family, like most other families, have their troubles and their difficulties. At the same time Jacqueline seems to have learnt a lot from her family, learning that she has kept her whole life. Lastly, I think that one of the crucial lessons Jacqueline learns is when her uncle goes to jail. When Jacqueline asks why he has gone o jail har mother answers: “It doesn’t matter. We love him. That´s all we need to know and keep remembering.” The lesson here is that we love our family, no matter what.  

How and why to use this text in a teaching situation

In this part of the text I will discuss how and why I think this book can be used in a teaching situation. I will start by discussing why I think that this book could be used in a teaching situation.

First and foremost I think that the way this book is written, short poems who together forms a narrative. I would think that this a quite unknown way of writing that the pupils are not accustomed to. By presenting this book and showing how poems can be written and used is in my opinion a good way to teach about poems to the pupils. At the same time the book is a memoir, a memoir could be quite a foreign type of text for the pupils.

Another reason I think that this book should be used in a teaching situation are the importance of some of the themes it discusses and brings forth. Some of the themes I believe are quite universal, i.e. family, friendship and growing up. But the themes discussing race and being a minority is something that not many Norwegian pupils can relate to. So this creates an opportunity to start a discussion and reflections about this theme. In my opinion the book could be used in a larger project teaching the pupils about the civil rights movement, as this book gives a quite unique look a how it a young child tried to understand the problems in the U.S. at the time. This could help a Norwegian pupil to better relate to the issue, because I would believe it is quite foreign for them.

This text offers first and foremost language input, new language for the pupils to learn. At the same time the text also offers a great deal of cultural input, and as mentioned before, creates a great opportunity to let the pupils learn more about the culture in the U.S. at this time. (Munden, p.106)

In this part of the blogpost I will write about how I would use this book in a teaching situation.

Goals from LK06:

English after 7^th grade:

·      lese og forstå ulike typer tekster av varierende omfang fra forskjellige kilder

·      uttrykke seg på en kreativ måte inspirert av ulike typer engelskspråklige litterære tekster fra forskjellige kilder

·      gi uttrykk for egne reaksjoner på engelskspråklige litterære tekster, film, nettkultur, bilder og musikk

The specific chapter from the book that I would let the pupils work with is “roman”, the poem where Jacqueline writes about how she felt when her new baby brother was born.

“But I don’t like the new baby of the family.

I want to send it back to wherever

babies live before they get here.”  

The fact that Jacqueline gets so jealous about her new baby brother is something I think a lot of pupils can relate to, and thus create some good discussions about this text.

1.     The teacher introduces the book “Brown Girl Dreaming” to the class. What kind of book is it, where is the author from etc. Have the pupils ever heard of a memoir or an autobiography? What is the difference between these two?

2.     The teacher reads one of the poems in the book aloud to the pupils. We discuss the poem afterward and talk about any difficult word. If there are questions about the meaning of the poem I think it is important to not say anything concrete to the pupils, but let them think for themselves. Munden has written about how a child can understand a written text better when it is read aloud by a skilled adult, instead of just read aloud by the childe. (Munden, Page 43) So to create a better understanding of the text for the pupils, I think it is important to read the text aloud first.

3.     Afterwards the pupils can read the poem for themselves. Depending on the groups some of the pupils could read aloud to each other or read silently. In some groups you can have some pupils that have difficulties with reading English, so these could perhaps read in pairs.

4.     When the pupils are done reading they can put into small groups, and start preparing questions for the “hot-seat” part afterwards. And one of the pupils are going to be chosen to sit in the “hot-seat”. Preferably it should be one of the more capable pupils that can withstand sitting in the centre of the group and also have a good understanding of the text itself.

5.     Working in a “Hot-seat” one of the pupils gets into the role as one of the characters in the text. The rest of the pupils then get to ask questions to the one in the “hot-seat” about their role, motives and thoughts. (Gamble, page 53)

6.     Finally, to end the session, the teacher and the pupils have a joint discussion about the text, and talk to the pupil about what they learned talking to the pupil in the “hot-seat.”


Sources:

·      Gamble, Nikki (2013): Exploring Children´s Literature: Reading With Pleasure and Purpose. 3^rd edition. London: Sage Publications.

·      Munden, Juliet (2015) Twinkle Twinkle. 3^rd. edition. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademiske.

·       Utdanningsdirektoratet (2013) English subject curriculum. Sourced 05.04.2016 from http://www.udir.no/kl06/eng1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-7.-arstrinn/?lplang=eng

·       Woodson, J. (2014) Brown Girl Dreaming. Nancy Paulsen Books.

Brown Girl Dreaming

By Eirin Jensen

In this blog entry I will first present an analysis of the theme family in Jaqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming. Secondly I will discuss how this text can be used in teaching. I chose to do an analysis of family because I think that it is a relatable theme for pupils in primary school.

Family

Brown Girl Dreaming was written by Jacqueline Woodson in 2014, and is a memoir of her childhood and how it was for her as an African American growing up in the USA in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement. The memoir is told through poems with free verses, and are divided into short chapters with connected memories and stories with different themes. There are many relevant themes in the book, for instance friendship, religion, prejudice, growing up and the Civil Rights Movement. The stories are told by Jacqueline, but through other people’s perspectives.

Jacqueline’s memoir tells the story of her family through their and her own perspectives, and the reflections reveals a grown up author writing through the eyes of a child. The poem sometimes, no words are needed (Woodson, 2014, p.131), is an example of this: You don’t need words / on a night like this. Just the warmth / of your grandfather’s arm. Just the silent promise / that the world as we know it / will always be there. Here she reflects on how much her grandfather meant for her, and how important he was in her family.  Jacqueline gives impressions of the value of family through her reflections and feelings. Family is represented by feelings and actions, and examples of this are the poems Gunnar’s children and sometimes, no words are needed (Woodson, 2014, pp. 50-52, 131) where we meet Jacqueline’s grandfather, and how he is a symbol of home, safety, belonging, warmth, love and unity. In the poems the ghosts of the nelsonville house and genetics (Woodson, 2014, pp. 10-12, 148), Jacqueline expresses the importance of family history, how being in family means staying together and how family means resemblance and having something in common. The connection between family and home is a continuous theme, where Jacqueline felt halfway home because her family were not all together in one place. This feeling is conveyed in the poems halfway home #1, halfway home #2 and family (Woodson, 2014, pp.104, 183-184, 207).

The theme family includes different aspects of our life, such as love, compassion, support, pride, security, closeness and the feeling of belonging. It seems like family was very important for Jacqueline’s childhood, and it is a highly relatable theme for giving context to language learning.

Teaching

The poetic design of Jacqueline’s memoir is an excellent basis for using the text in teaching in primary school, because of the short chapters and sentences. Jacqueline has exact and vivid descriptions which I believe is easy for children to make mental imagines of. When using a story in language learning, it is important that the language is authentic and the content relatable and interesting (Munden & Myhre, 2015, p.111). Therefore, it is advisable to be careful when choosing a suitable text to use in teaching.

There are several competence aims that may be relevant in a teaching situation when it comes to using Brown Girl Dreaming. I have chosen competence aims from the English subject curriculum after Year 7 (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2013, pp.7-8), and I will give some examples of activities than can be carried out.

Express own opinions about familiar topics / express own reactions to English literary texts

It is easier to express oneself orally than through writing because the words flow more naturally. Family is a major theme in the book, and a familiar topic for pupils. Therefore, I believe it can help pupils expressing themselves orally. To begin with, it is important to activate any pre-knowledge and prepare the pupils for the theme and activities. Then as a preparation for the poem Roman (Woodson, 2014, p. 138), one can talk about family and siblings. Afterwards, the pupils can be divided into pairs (or groups) and read the text first silently alone, and then out loud together, this to give them a chance to practice any difficult words. Then they would be given questions to discuss orally, for example: What does it mean to be jealous? Have you ever been jealous before? Why? As a follow-up activity, the pupils can make a role play where someone is jealous of another, and how (s)he deals with it. The jealousy might end up in a conflict, and since it is a role play, the pupils can improvise and exaggerate (Munden, 2014, p.230).

Express oneself creatively to produce different types of text

There are many ways to express oneself creatively, but since the book is written in poetry, it can inspire the pupils to write their own memoir poems. The teacher can choose a poem, read it aloud and have a small class discussion of the theme(s). Before the pupils write their own poems, it is advisable to model the activity. To differentiate, one can offer writing frames with starting sentences or word banks. Jacqueline’s poems are not structured the way the pupils might be used to, which can be inspirational for those who struggle to write poems of a certain structure. For inspiration, the teacher may ask the pupils questions that triggers their memory. After they have written their poems, the pupils can draw an illustration and share their poems for the rest of the class, this to give value to the activity and their achievement (Munden, 204, p. 289).

Given these examples of using Brown Girl Dreaming in teaching, it is also good to remember the importance of encouraging pupils to read English texts. Reading for pleasure is not only important in Norwegian, but also in a second language and can thus be a motivation for reading in other subjects (Munden, 2014, p.325). Although, Brown Girl Dreaming is not a typical children’s book as it demands a little pre-knowledge about The Civil Rights Movement and relatable themes, it might be motivational for some pupils to read short poems. It can definitely be used in higher levels because of the central historical themes. Brown Girl Dreaming can serve as a starting point for both written and oral activities, but can also be used in cross-curricular projects with Social Studies (civil rights, righteousness) and Religion (Jehovah’s witnesses). The advantage of Brown Girl Dreaming is the poetic structure, which makes it easy to find a suitable poem.

Sources:

Munden, J. og A. Myhre (2015). Twinkle Twinkle, English 1-4, 3.ed. Oslo: Cappelen Damm AS

Woodson, J. (2014). Brown Girl Dreaming. New York: Penguin Group (USA) LLC

Munden, J. (2014). Engelsk på mellomtrinnet. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag

Utdanningsdirektoratet (2013). National Curriculum for Knowledge Promotion, English subject curriculum. Sourced 09.04.16 from http://www.udir.no/kl06/eng1-03/Hele/Kompetansemaal/kompetansemal-etter-7.-arstrinn/?lplang=eng