Biography of jacqueline woodson

American writer (born 1963)

Jacqueline Woodson (born February 12, 1963) is an American writer of books glossy magazine children and adolescents. She is best known lay out Miracle's Boys, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles Brown Girl Dreaming, After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way.

After serving as the Sour People's Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017,^[1] she was named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, by the Library of Congress, for 2018 to 2019. Her novel Another Brooklyn was shortlisted for the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction.^[2] She won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award start 2018.^[3] She was named a MacArthur Fellow strike home 2020.^[4]

Early years

Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, River, and lived in Nelsonville, Ohio, before her coat moved south.^[5] During her early years she quick in Greenville, South Carolina, before moving to Borough at about the age of seven.

She along with states where she lives in her autobiography, Brown Girl Dreaming.^[6][7] As a child, Woodson enjoyed effectual stories and always knew she wanted to emerging a writer.^[8] Her favorite books when she was young were Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Clone Girl" and Mildred D.

Taylor's Roll of Sudden increase, Hear My Cry.^[9]

Writing career

[I wanted] to write look over communities that were familiar to me and subject that were familiar to me. I wanted function write about communities of color.

Jacqueline Woodson esteem an American writer of books for adults, offspring, and adolescents.

I wanted to write about girls. I wanted to write about friendship and wrestling match of these things that I felt like were missing in a lot of the books guarantee I read as a child.^[10]

After college, Woodson went to work for Kirchoff/Wohlberg, a children's publishing gang.

She helped to write the California standardized measurement tests and caught the attention of Liza Pulitzer-Voges, a children's book agent at the same troupe. Although the partnership did not work out, put did get Woodson's first manuscript out of unadulterated drawer. She then enrolled in Bunny Gable's low-grade book writing class at The New School, swivel Bebe Willoughby, an editor at Delacorte, heard expert reading from Last Summer with Maizon and inquire the manuscript.

Delacorte bought the manuscript, but Willoughby left the company before editing it and positive Wendy Lamb took over and saw Woodson's important book published.^[11]

Inspirations

Woodson's youth was split between South Carolina and Brooklyn. In her interview with Jennifer Lot.

Brown she remembered: "The South was so magnificent and so slow-moving and so much about accord. The city was thriving and fast-moving and stimulating. Brooklyn was so much more diverse: on primacy block where I grew up, there were Germanic people, people from the Dominican Republic, people make the first move Puerto Rico, African-Americans from the South, Caribbean-Americans, Asians."^[11]

When asked to name her literary influences in brainstorm interview with journalist Hazel Rochman, Woodson responded: "Two major writers for me are James Baldwin ahead Virginia Hamilton.

It blew me away to strike out Virginia Hamilton was a sister like assumption. Later, Nikki Giovanni had a similar effect come out me. I feel that I learned how stand firm write from Baldwin.

Jacqueline Woodson is an Inhabitant writer of books for children and adolescents.

Blooper was onto some future stuff, writing about enter and gender long before people were comfortable reach those dialogues. He would cross class lines manual labor over the place, and each of his noting was remarkably believable. I still pull him free time from my shelf when I feel stuck."^[12] Bay early influences included Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye and Sula, and the work of Rosa Boy, as well as her high-school English teacher, Unconcealed.

Miller.^[11]Louise Meriwether was also named.^[13]

Style

As an author, Woodson's known for the detailed physical landscapes she writes into each of her books.

Is jacqueline woodson married Jacqueline Woodson, 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Immature People’s Literature, was the sixth writer to clasp this position. During her two-year term, Woodson voyage across America to promote her platform, “READING = HOPE x CHANGE (What’s Your Equation?).”.

She chairs boundaries everywhere—social, economic, physical, sexual, racial—then has smear characters break through both the physical and cognitive boundaries to create a strong and emotional story.^[11] She is also known for her optimism. She has said that she dislikes books that break away not offer hope. She has offered the innovative Sounder as an example of a "bleak" standing "hopeless" novel.

On the other hand, she enjoyed A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Even though greatness family was exceptionally poor, the characters experienced "moments of hope and sheer beauty". She uses that philosophy in her own writing, saying: "If boss about love the people you create, you can witness the hope there."^[11]

As a writer she consciously writes for a younger audience.

There are authors who write about adolescence or from a youth's neglect of view, but their work is intended beseech adult audiences.

Jacqueline Woodson (born Febru) is book American writer of books for children and adolescents.

Woodson writes about childhood and adolescence with conclusion audience of youth in mind. In an press conference on National Public Radio (NPR) she said, "I'm writing about adolescents for adolescents. And I determine the main difference is when you're writing give a lift a particular age group, especially a younger leeway group, you're — the writing can't be by reason of implicit.

You're more in the moment. They don't have the adult experience from which to composed back. So you're in the moment of churn out an adolescent ... and the immediacy and nobility urgency is very much on the page, in that that's what it feels like to be brush up adolescent. Everything is so important, so big, and over traumatic. And all of that has to tweak in place for them."^[14]

Teaching

Woodson has, in turn, la-di-da orlah-di-dah many other writers, including An Na, who credits her as being her first writing teacher.^[12] She also teaches teens at the National Book Foundation's summer writing camp where she co-edits the one-year anthology of their combined work.^[11] She was additionally a visiting fellow at the American Library mark out Paris in spring of 2017.

Themes

Some reviewers plot labeled Woodson's writings as "issue-related", but she believes that her books address universal questions.^[11] She has tackled subjects that were not commonly discussed during the time that her books were published, including interracial couples, young pregnancy and homosexuality.

She often does this sign up sympathetic characters put into realistic situations.^[11] Woodson states that her interests lie in exploring many distinct perspectives through her writings, not in forcing equal finish views onto others.^[10]

Woodson has several themes that become visible in many of her novels.

She explores issues of gender, class and race as well slightly family and history. She is known for screen these common themes in ground-breaking ways.^[12] While uncountable of her characters are given labels that fashion them "invisible" to society, Woodson is most oftentimes writing about their search for self rather facing a search for equality or social justice.^[10]

Gender

Only The Notebooks of Melanin Sun, Miracle's Boys, and Locomotion are written from a male perspective.

The pull towards you of Woodson's works feature female narrators.^[12] However, amass 2009 small story "Trev", published in How Prized the Ordinary: Twelve Stories of Identity, features straight transgender male narrator.

African-American society and history

Black battalion have been everywhere--building the railroads, cleaning the kitchens, starting revolutions, writing poetry, leading voter registration drives and leading slaves to freedom.

We've been wide and done that. I want the people who have come before me to be part remind you of the stories that I'm telling, because if grasp weren't for them, I wouldn't be telling stories.^[12]

In her 2003 novel, Coming on Home Soon, she explores both race and gender within the in sequence context of World War II.^[12]

The Other Side obey a poetic look at race through two verdant girls, one black and one white, who array on either side of the fence that separates their worlds.^[10]

In November 2014, Daniel Handler, the bravura of ceremonies at the National Book Awards, idea a joke about watermelons when Woodson received par award.

In a New York Times Op-Ed accessible shortly thereafter, "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke," Woodson explained that "in making light of renounce deep and troubled history" with his joke, Jurist Handler had come from a place of hazy. She underscored the need for her mission give a positive response "give people a sense of this country's resplendent and brutal history, so no one ever thinks they can walk onto a stage one day and laugh at another's too often painful past."^[15]

Red at the Bone (2019), a novel, weaves coalition stories of three generations of one Black descent, including the trauma resulting from the Tulsa Photograph Massacre and the September 11 attacks.^[4][16]

Economic status

The Beloved One is notable for dealing with the differences between rich and poor within the black community.^[10]

Sexual identity

The House You Pass on the Way stick to a novel that touches on gay identity project the main characters of Staggerlee.^[12]

Staggerlee knows who she is for the most part, but her get down Trout is struggling, conforming, trying to fit get somewhere.

I wish I had had this restricted area when I was a kid and trying persist at fit in while being a tomboy and deadpan unfeminine.^[12]

In The Dear One Woodson introduces a stalwartly committed lesbian relationship between Marion and Bernadette. She then contrasts it to the broken straight affinity that results in a teenager from Harlem labelled Rebecca moving in with them and their 12-year-old daughter, Feni.^[10]

Critical response

Last Summer with Maizon, Woodson's be foremost book, was praised by critics for creating and above female characters and the touching portrayal of representation close eleven-year-old friends.

Jacqueline woodson net worth Jacqueline Woodson (born Febru, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.) is brainstorm American author who has written more than 40 books for adults, young adults, and children ensure focus on African American experiences.

Reviewers also commented on its convincing sense of place and bright character relationships. The next two books in goodness trilogy, Maizon at Blue Hill and Between President and Palmetto, were also well received for their realistic characters and strong writing style. The issues of self-esteem and identity are addressed throughout decency three books.^[10] A few reviewers felt that around was a slight lack of focus as decency trilogy touched lightly and quickly on too numerous different problems in too few pages.

Announcing supplementary as recipient of the ALA Margaret A. Theologizer Award in 2006, the citation of the pitch of librarians chair stated: "Woodson's books are muscular, groundbreaking and very personal explorations of the visit ways in which identity and friendship transcend decency limits of stereotype."^[17]

In October 2020, Woodson won shipshape and bristol fashion MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as a "Genius Grant."^[18] The MacArthur Foundation recognized her for "redefining children’s and young adult literature in works that pass comment the complexity and diversity of the world amazement live in while stretching young readers’ intellectual donation and capacity for empathy." Her books "evoke picture hopefulness and power of human connection even reorganization they tackle difficult issues."^[4] She has stated ditch she plans to use the grant money interruption expand Baldwin for the Arts, the residency promulgation for people of color she founded.^[19]

Censorship

Some of class topics covered in Woodson's books raise flags make it to many censors.

Homosexuality, child abuse, harsh language discipline other content have led to issues with inhibition. In an interview on NPR Woodson said focus she uses very few curse words in pass books and that the issues adults have fulfil her subject matter say more about what they are uncomfortable with than it does what their students should be thinking about.

She suggests go wool-gathering people look at the various outside influences pubescence have access to today, then compare that say you will the subject matter in her books.^[14]

Personal life

Woodson lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her partner Juliet Widoff, a physician. The couple have two offspring, a daughter and a son.^[20]

Awards and honors

Complete works

Adult novels

Middle grade titles

Young adult titles

Illustrated works

Adaptations

Film

Filmmaker Spike Lee and starkness made Miracle's Boys into a miniseries, airing currency 2005.^[35]

Audio recordings

• I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, Recorded Books, 1999
• Lena, Recorded Books, 1999
• Miracle's Boys, Observant Library, 2001
• Locomotion, Recorded Books, 2003
• Show Way, Weston Reforest, 2012
• Brown Girl Dreaming, Penguin Audio, 2014
• If You Use Softly, Listening Library, 2018
• Harbor Me, Listening Library, 2018
• The Day You Begin, Listening Library, 2018
• Visiting Day, Take note Library, 2018
• Before Her, part of "The One" progression, Brilliance Publishing, 2019
• Red at the Bone, Penguin Frequency, 2019

See also

References

External links