Jacqueline Woodson's ANOTHER BROOKLYN is an astounding, necessary work. This is lyric narrative at its best. Simple yet searing, August's story performs many tasks at once, and does them excellently. Celebrated for the National Book Award-winning BROWN GIRL DREAMING, Woodson turns her voice now to a novel for adults (her first in 20 years), and it’s just as astute and mesmeric --- if not even sharper. 

The novel spans from the 1970s to just about present-day Brooklyn. Woodson's writing almost takes the shape of vignette, moments and passages that ebb and weave as they evoke and explore memory: its pain and potency. August, the very name of our protagonist, sets the tone. Her name was given to her from her mother's long labor that began at the end of June, a celebration and commemoration. In August she came to life, marking the end of her mother's agonizing ordeal. August: the bright hot final burst of summer until the city shifts into something else altogether. August's story is one of shifting; it is, at its core, a coming of age. It is also a story, of course, of Brooklyn, and of the lost innocence that comes in growing up surrounded by men on streets who see your ascent into adulthood as an excuse to leer --- and of gentrification, and the lost innocence of neighborhoods that never should have had to discover that "development" meant gentrification.

"My expectations for this book were high, and still I found myself astounded. ANOTHER BROOKLYN packs so much work into such a beautiful, poignant narrative."

That gentrification may mean not fixing societies --- not addressing poverty, illness, rape culture, low opportunities, institutionalized classism, disenfranchised citizens, poor education, child abuse and the myriad of reasons behind it --- but building well-to-do white establishments on top of them. “Fixing” so-called "bad" neighborhoods may mean ignoring the problems that exist and shunting people to the side or worse, and building over their bodies. Woodson explores this complicated, current issue through the eyes of her powerful, susceptible, relatable protagonist.

August is the center of this work, and she is profoundly well-written. Her voice is clear yet imaginative, and she carries the reader steadily through story and transition. August lost her mother as a young girl, and the process of her denial and acceptance is a throughline. We sometimes --- and often during times of shattering loss --- tell ourselves certain lies as children to keep going, to preserve what we know to be true in the world. This keeps us alive. It does not shield us from the pain again when it resurfaces, and it so often does. August's father and some of her surrounding peers turn to Islam, to shun the white culture of the oppressor and celebrate blackness, but though August seeks solace, she doesn't find it within her father's Allah. She doesn't find it in boys either, although she tries, because she knows she's supposed to do so. 

Woodson does it so well, evoking the twists and turns of how girls are supposed to speak to boys, of how black girls especially may be encouraged to stay chaste, defy racist expectations and excel. At the same time, girls are encouraged to evaluate themselves and their self-esteem based on how attractive they appear to which men. Woodson portrays beautifully, and crucially, the process of a girl growing up. She understands the rhythms and intricacies of coming of age as a girl. Furthermore, she delves into what it means to be a girl in New York, a black girl in a changing Brooklyn, and this story is still too often unheard. The experiences of August's young circle of friends are sometimes painful to read, but vindicating. To bear witness to unapologetic meditations on rape culture, girlhood, gentrification, grief and their intersections is quite a profound and critical experience.

Woodson embroiders queerness so authentically throughout the novel. If one throughline is loss, the other is the emergence of intimacy. Neither she nor August shies away from how girls learn to take care of each other --- how girl hate and pettiness is as bred into us as the desire to appeal to the male gaze, how women may sometimes find comfort and understanding in the unscripted spaces of intimacy between them, and how it can develop into earnest love. There aren't many mainstream narratives that handle these experiences as eloquently and kindly as Woodson does here.

My expectations for this book were high, and still I found myself astounded. ANOTHER BROOKLYN packs so much work into such a beautiful, poignant narrative. Entirely accessible, it elevates voices too often unheard. This is essential reading.