Language and Storytelling Theme Analysis

Brown Girl Dreaming is largely about Jacqueline’s early impulse towards storytelling and narration. For Jacqueline, writing becomes a way of coming to terms with many of the painful aspects of her life; storytelling empowers her to change her relationship to her own memories, denying them their power to cause her pain.

In Jacqueline’s own life, other people’s capacity for storytelling soothes her and helps her find catharsis. She finds works that especially touch her, like poems by Robert Frost and Langston Hughes, a short story by Oscar Wilde, and Georgiana’s recitation of bible stories. In showcasing these works, Woodson is perhaps nodding to their influence on Brown Girl Dreaming—Woodson’s choice to write in verse rather than prose, for example, might be reflected in Jacqueline’s early affinity for poems and oral storytelling.

Over the course of the book, Woodson tracks Jacqueline’s progress in acquiring language skills to show how Jacqueline becomes a storyteller herself. The reader observes as Jacqueline learns, with difficulty, to read and write by transcribing audio into her composition notebook. She desperately desires to be able to write her name “by [herself].” By emphasizing the individuality of this act, Woodson seems to imply that writing, identifying, and naming herself are key steps in Jacqueline’s quest for self-actualization and identity.

As Jacqueline learns to express herself through storytelling, her narrative style is sometimes questioned or policed. Other characters pay close attention to how Jacqueline speaks. Mama ensures that her children speak properly, avoiding words like “ma’am” and “ain’t.” Often, Jacqueline’s style of speaking reflects the fact that her family has moved around frequently. At points, Southern children make fun of her Northern accent. Later, after spending time in the South, the Northerners mock her Southern drawl. Jacqueline’s childhood dance between the North and the South causes her speech to be constantly scrutinized, provoking a narrative anxiety in Jacqueline.

By the end of the book, though, Jacqueline’s Greenville accent has mostly transformed into a Brooklyn one, and Jacqueline seems more comfortable with her style of narration. The multiplicity of her influences, rather than being a burden, becomes a boon. In the last poem, Jacqueline states that there are “many worlds” for her to choose from, which reconfigures her varied experiences as endless possibility rather than crisis. Jacqueline’s life as a writer allows her to think about her life in complex ways and find peace in contradictions.

In turn, Jacqueline’s rich childhood allows her to write. Despite her initial difficulties learning to write, Jacqueline has mastered reading and writing by the book’s end. When Ms. Vivo tells her “you’re a writer,” she validates one of Jacqueline’s biggest dreams; Woodson clearly draws attention to her success in achieving that dream with the title of the memoir itself. The existence of Woodson’s book is the clearest indication that Jacqueline has succeeded as a writer and storyteller.