Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson (2016, Amistad; 192 pages) Another Brooklyn is the first adult novel in 20 years by Jacqueline Woodson (National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming), a recipient of four Newbery Honor awards. This novel starts with a punch to your heart in the form of a sentence: "For a long time, my mother wasn´t dead yet." This is the story of August, a young girl trying to find herself in the midst of danger, loss, silence, memories, and the beauty and burden of growing up in 1970s Brooklyn. The story is based on the memories of August as an adult. She is returning home for the funeral of her father, now having become an Ivy League-educated anthropologist. Her Brooklyn memories, her story, begins in 1973, 20 years earlier, when she moves with her brother and father to the neighborhood following the death of her mother. She is eleven years old and she is in deep denial about her mother´s fate, finding consolation with her friendship to a group of girls who will become her life. Their names are Sylvia, Angela and Gigi. They are four girls "together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone." It is indeed beautiful to read about them, their relationship, and their coming of age adventures in a turbulent historical period -- the late 1960s and 1970s -- a detail the novel reflects with accuracy and also in a lyrical way. The prose of Jacqueline Woodson is poetic, tender, exquisite and sensuous, and she masters the most singular of voices. Each page leads the reader to a new secret and a new revelation based on August's memory. "This is memory" becomes, in fact, a motto, and a reminder of the importance of living in the present too. Recommended to those who love singular voices, heartbreaking stories and lyrical narrative. Find this title in our catalog: Another Brooklyn Recommended by: Maite
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