This book reads like poetry rather than prose. It is even broken up almost in stanzas like poetry. Set mainly in the 1970s of Brooklyn, New York City this novel tells the story of a woman, August, from our time looking back to those days after the death of her father and to the friendship she had with three girls, Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi.
August, her brother, and her father left her mother's family home in Tennessee after their mother went crazy when her brother died in Vietnam and she refused to believe it and threatened to become violent. August hopes that her mother will join the family soon. She was eight and her brother was four when they moved to Brooklyn.
It would take them a while to fit in, but when they did and she made friends with the three girls, Sylvia the singer whose family has money and disapproves of them, Angela the dancer who is keeping secrets about her home life, and Gigi, the actress. The girls are inseparable and seek to protect each other from the men who lurk in the shadows seeking to harm them.
This is a world of damaged veterans returning from the war and of drug addicts, mainly heroin, seeking to escape the pain of life. Her downstairs neighbor is a prostitute drug addict. But her world is also made up of her father's new religion, The Nation of Islam. While her brother readily embraces it, she does not quite so much. This is a beautifully written book that explores the themes of growing into womanhood and childhood friendships. You really want to know what makes August into the woman she becomes and the people who influence that character along the way. I highly recommend this book.
Quotes
Link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Another-Brooklyn-Novel-Jacqueline-Woodson-ebook/dp/B01825C5JI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528722434&sr=8-1&keywords=another+brooklynI know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.-Jacqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn p 1)My mother had not believed in friendship among women. She said women weren’t to be trusted. Keep your arm out, she said, And keep women a whole other hand away from the farthest tips of your fingernails. She told me to keep my nails long.-Jaqueline Woodson (Another Brooklyn p 19)
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