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Jacqueline Woodson
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 If
You Come Softly by
Jacqueline Woodson
Gr. 7 -10.
People stare when teenagers Miah and Ellie touch and hold hands in
public. He is black. She is white. In alternating chapters, we
learn about how they meet in their private high school and fall in
love, and we learn a lot about their families, both of which are
far from perfect. As in all her fiction, Woodson confronts
prejudice head-on. Miah's family is rich and famous, but when he
and Ellie walk in Central Park, two old white women ask her if she
is all right. Ellie, whose family is Jewish and secular, comes to
realize that she takes her whiteness, her race, for granted in a
way that Miah never can. He always knows he is black. The burning
of black churches in the South are part of who he is. His mother
accepts Ellie; so does his friend whose family is biracial. But
Ellie's lesbian older sister asks Ellie to think twice about
dating a black guy. What will her parents do? Readers will wish
that Woodson had given us that elemental scene when Ellie brings
Miah home to dinner. Instead, the sudden violent ending is a
devastating shock that seems stuck on, though it does make us go
back and reread the story for clues, and they are there. Many will
want to go on from this story to the personal essays in Half
& Half: Writers on Growing Up Biracial and Bicultural.
-- Hazel Rochman
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By Susan Hacker, Michelle Kowalsky, and Lydia
Lloyd with Kay Vandergrift
Excerpt:
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Ohio, and grew up in
Greenville, South Carolina. She remembers her childhood as a
traumatic one, and recalls being sexually abused by her mother's
boyfriend from the ages of six to thirteen, when he moved out. She
recounts the painful details of "trips" that she and the
boyfriend would take, and of how she tried to imagine her spirit
leaving her body in order to deal with the harsh reality she was
facing every day of her life.
With her strong religious faith and
determination backing her, she has dealt with her turbulent
childhood and has moved on to become a successful writer.
Although, she says, the memories linger and are often
overwhelming, "By my will, my strength, and the grace of God,
I survived." Jacqueline Woodson, through her writing and work
with children in shelters and homes, hopes to bring a message of
hope to abused children throughout the world.
The author presently lives in Brooklyn, New
York, and is known in literary circles as a famous lesbian author
who tries to break through the stereotypes associated with her
sexual preference. "No one ever says 'Hemingway, a
misogynist, anti-Semitic, white, male writer'. How come I can't
just be a writer?" she asks, instead of being labeled as
"an African-American, lesbian writer..."
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From Preview Magazine, Vol 2
Excerpt:
The first time I tried to write a book with a
male protagonist I thought I would end up throwing the book and
every accouterment associated with writing out my window. From the
beginning, every twist and turn of that book was a struggle. When
I asked my brothers and male friends about their experiences as
adolescent boys, few remembered anything worth adding to the
story. I remember my little brother saying, "You used to pick
on me a lot, then I got bigger than you and you stopped." (My
brother is six foot three.) I began the book about a dozen times,
finally settling into the theory that boys were often forced into
a role that too often revolved around being tough, tearless and
brave. I decided that beneath this veneer, beneath this struggle
of being "boy" in a society that ascribes to gender
roles, rules and regulations, a softer, more sensitive boy always
existed...
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Names Index:
A B
C D
E F
G H
I J
K L
M N
O P
Q R
S T
U V
W X
Y Z
| Authors
Index | Scholars
Index |
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