Poured Over: Jacqueline Woodson on Remember Us

By Jenna Seery / October 17, 2023 at 6:00 am

“I expect my reader to meet me halfway with their own experiences and fill in the white space, fill in what’s left unsaid.”

Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson brings the reader to Brooklyn in the 70s to examine memory and acceptance through the eyes of one girl from her childhood and beyond. Woodson joins us to talk about writing for young people, the themes of childhood and nostalgia, creating identity through literature and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.      

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.   

Featured Books (Episode):
Remember Us by Jacqueline Woodson
Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis
Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Full Episode Transcript
Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Jacqueline Woodson is one of my favorite people in the world. She’s a great writer, we know that she’s won all of the prizes and all of the things. And she’s really good about talking to kids about reading and books and words and all of the stuff that blows up your world in the best possible way. I’m so excited. I’m so so excited. Remember Us is the new book for middle readers, young readers, middle grade, how am I supposed to young readers, I guess is the best way.

Jacqueline Woodson

Yeah, I would say to young readers for everyone, as Jason says about his writing. But yeah, it would be considered young readers, middle aged middle grade readers, young people’s literature,

it’s really great. This book, Remember Us. And it is very what I think of as sort of your world. We’re in Bushwick. It’s the 70s. We’re talking about memory and home and a little bit of grief and a little bit of sadness. And you and I got to have a conversation about this book in front of some booksellers and librarians back in May. And it was really fun. But I have to tell you ever since that moment, and we’re taping in September, I’ve been thinking about Another Brooklyn, which is the novel you did for adults, that was published in 2016. And I love those girls. And I really love August as an adult. And I love her dad, and I love her little brother and I love the girl. So I kind of want to bounce back and forth between the two because Bushwick in the 70s obviously, is the soul of both books. And I love reading you when I’m switching gears back and forth between younger audience, older audience, and I’m also imagining what the audience in between is going to do with Another Brooklyn because if I were a teenager, and I got my hands on Another Brooklyn, I would have been pretty excited. But let’s start with Remember Us. When did you start working on this book, because sage is a pretty great kid. And I can see her fitting right in on the edges with the girls.

It’s so true. I definitely think that all of my books are in conversation with each other, and especially Another Brooklyn and Remember Us, so I’m so glad he called that out. And Sage felt like, Sage has always been with me and writers say this all the time. But I feel like I’ve always wanted to write about what it means to be inside and outside of a moment at the same time, inside and outside of one’s body at the same time. And I think I have done it historically in so many of my books and this and with Remember Us I am so much more intentional about telling that particular story. So I would say she’s been with me for 20 years, the story of the fires has been with me forever, and just not knowing how it’s just not having a weight into it until I realized what it was. I wanted this book to say about as we as you said grief about Bushwick about girlhood and friendship and all of the things that it does visit and change.

Right? Like change can be I know some adults who don’t really like change. And I guess some kids are like, Well, we’ll see. And, and then they do fine. I mean change is something that sort of sends everyone into different corners. Let’s put it that way for the moment.

And it’s so interesting because when I think about Another Brooklyn, have both those books were talking about white flight a little bit and Remember Us not much but Remember Us it’s more about Black flight, right Black and Brown flight because people were leaving Bushwick to survive, to save their lives whereas white flight was more about people leaving Bushwick because they were afraid of the people coming in. So two very different scenarios. But people tried to escape a moment in a certain period of time.

Right? But we can’t escape class. I mean kids know when they have different opportunities when they have different sneakers when they have different home lives when they have I mean kids know and there’s a way to talk about this stuff without being heavy handed, but acknowledging it and that’s actually more of a high wire act when I think some people realize.

I think they know and they don’t know they don’t go until the mirror is held up to them or the window as Dr. Dean Smith’s Bishop talks about, you know is held up for them to see this other space in which they are not a part of, but inside the particular in Remember Us they don’t really know until they see what’s happening on Ridgewood place, right. And in that moment of seeing these people living in brick houses, these people having these great meals and desserts, these people having these fancy cars and light that that reflects back onto them, and a reflection of their own poverty and what they don’t have that keeps them what they don’t have. So it is interesting, but there is also the cocoon. That is in some ways a safety net because there are so many other people like them in their space. So it is interesting, I think about my own childhood. The dividing line was this railroad track on Irving avenue that separated Bushwick for Ridgewood and Ridgewood was very, very white Bushwick was black and brown. And Ridgewood had stone houses and people who seem to have means, I mean, they were working class poor white folks, but they seemed to be of a different class. But just knowing that there was something over there that I wasn’t allowed to have made me look at what I did have differently and made me also want to embrace the people who were like me and us not having what they had across hemorrhage, which is so interesting now because um, I was at the wine store in my neighborhood in Park Slope and, and this guy, right, the guy and I were talking the wine cellar, and I asked him where he lived. And he said, he lived in Bushwick. And I said, Oh, we’re in Bushwick. And he gave me an address. That was in Ridgewood. I’m like, That’s not Bushwick. That’s rich. I remember as a kid being ashamed of Bushwick and lying and saying I lived in Ridgewood. And to see that flip that switch put that way was hysterical for me. And also kind of heartbreaking.

Yeah, I mean, the heartbreaking piece too. So my parents left Brooklyn Heights for Massachusetts because of a job. So I missed where I was supposed to be, ended up in New England. So you know, such as, but and Yeah, Dad and whatever. But at the same time, part of what I get when I’m reading your books, whether I’m reading for the short set, or I’m reading for adults, is the sense of community, and you capture community and sort of the ebb and flow of community, but there’s always a big beating heart to what you’re doing. And it’s something that I really wish that I’d had in the way that you experience it and the way you put it into your books, and you know, the suburbs are different. I had a nice life, I have nothing to complain about. But the world that you conjure on the page is so exciting. And yet at the same time, there is a little bit of melancholy to it. There’s a little bit of nostalgia, but not the creepy nostalgia. The good, I think there are two different kinds of nostalgia. There’s the weaponized and the good.

Yes, yes 100%. It’s so funny because it’s of course, it’s me looking back on a time right in both Another Brooklyn and Remember Us. And in that way, Remember Us breaks the rule of middle grade fiction and the same way that Brown Girl Dreaming did way one of the quote unquote rules is that that protagonist should be of the age, and that the book is targeted to of the young people is targeted to so the and that narrator should be that at age so. So if the kid if the story is about a 12 year old, where have a 12 year old telling that story in, Remember Us, it’s a character looking back on that time from an older space. So from that older space, she sees stuff that she might not have necessarily seen at that age in some way. Whereas Another Brooklyn, it’s an adult looking back on her childhood, but with the melancholy I feel like it’s always with me, in this way that I remember a writer asking me if I got jealous of other writers. And it was like, I don’t get I’m not jealous of other writers. I’m jealous of everybody who gets to have some other experience because I can only have this experience inside this particular body. But I want to know all those other experiences. I want to know what it’s like to be, you know, a person in Korea, I want to know what it’s like to grow up in Puerto Rico. I want to know what it’s like to live in the suburbs in Massachusetts. Okay. So I think there is a melancholy that we have this one life. And of course, we have the Mary Oliver talks about do what we can with it, and that trickles into my narratives in the way that looking back does bring a melancholy right, a wistfulness for the bitter sweetness of it, right. So there was and remember us it was there was struggle, but there was also all this light and all of This as you talk about community and all of this play, and all of this possibility. So I think in writing everything I write I, a part of my Jacqueline brain is looking back on that.

You have this great line in Another Brooklyn, and it’s August, sort of looking at her friends, and it’s maybe two thirds of the way through. She said, what keeps us keeping here. And this idea that place is so tangible. And the people, like you can’t separate the people from a place, right. And your kids that you create, are really, they’re so observant. And I think as a culture, like as a society and a culture, we forget that kids notice a lot. Like we forget all the time, and they’re actually not stupid creature. They’re just not stupid. Do you notice everything and it’s wild to me, when I see people kind of dismissing these experiences of childhood, and also I don’t really need children and books sounding like they’re 40. Like, let them sound like children, please. They have the rest of their lives to sound like they’re 40 We’re still making this mistake and not taking them seriously.

Oh, man because I think we forget our own childhoods, right. And a lot of people forget them because they were painful. And they don’t want to go back to what it mean, when you look at middle school is you cringe to think of having to have that experience again. And I think those of us who write to young people aren’t afraid of that. Like, we want to go back there and do something different in that space. And we want to go back there and have the power that we didn’t have as young people or give the young people that power in that space from what we’ve learned from it. But it is that balance of how do you do this without being didactic? How do you be this without making your young people old ladies, and I remember people used to always be like, and they would aggravate me to know and say, well, when are when are you going to write a book for adults? So you ever plan on writing grown up fiction and, and people don’t ask people who write for who write to adults? What are they planning to write a young people’s but a book targeted at young people? It’s not easy, right? I think one of the hardest things you can do is go back to that space and write with from the memory of that. And remember that kids are all eyes, all ears all the time. So we look at ourselves as young people we were watching and listening to everything young people also get so erased in our society are so invisible, that people disregard them. And don’t think of them as small humans who are already 100% there and taking in everything and they’re gonna grow up and spit it back at us whether it’s in therapy to our face. Because it there’s they’re actually just so deeply brilliant in this way that I am here for all day.

They’re connected, they don’t. It’s not a lack of filter on their part. They’re just grounded in a way and they just they have an ability to speak the truth in ways that the older we get, it’s sort of you know, it’s tapped out of us a little bit. You know, we’ve been sort of trained, I guess, for want of a better word to present ourselves differently, and, you know, play well with others. And kids are just like, wait a minute, this is some garbage. I mean, we’ve got kids in remember us. The adults are reliable. They’re a little more reliable than they are certainly in Another Brooklyn. But at the same time, adults aren’t necessarily the answer.

Yeah, because they aren’t to be and they definitely can’t be and the literature that’s targeted at young people because we know as kids that’s not who we went to, we went to each other. We went to our friends, we went to teenagers who are slightly older, we were not trying to cross that bridge to adults for because they weren’t on our side. No matter how much they were on our side. I know you know, I remember us there is the scene with sage and the fire the bathroom fire and her mother gets her out of there. Her mother’s eyes are just like, who are you? And it’s this moment of division, right? Like they’re they they’re each other’s close people and then suddenly her mother’s like I don’t know you at all. And so you just and but it has been leading up to Sage realizing that she is not as close to her mother. She thought she was because you can’t tell her that the incident that transpired before that, but it is that I mean I wouldn’t whenever someone says well, my mom is my best friend and my daughter’s my best friend. I’m like, oh, okay, if that’s who you are. I don’t understand it.

I was very fond of my mother. Great lady. Definitely my mama you Like, let’s just be clear on the roles, like, enjoyed her company quite a lot, every now and again would look at her very strangely because if you’ve been around New England, ladies of a certain age, they have feelings and opinions that are kind of fascinating. And I say that with love and respect, but, you know, and every now and again to, cuz she’s an immigrant, right? Like, she would have the immigrant mama moment come out, and he’s just like, okay, yes, yes. You know, would you like a snack. But not my best friend. Definitely, definitely not my best friend. But watching these kids move through the world, right, and you give them language. And I’m going to jump for a second and pull in Brown Girl Dreaming, because if for some reason, you’ve thought, Oh, this is just for the short set. Or you haven’t been able to listen to Jacqueline’s reading of it in the audio book. Adults who like poetry, adults who like memoir, please, just go listen, I was listening again, as I was prepping, because part of it is the language and the rhythm of the language and sort of making that shift from the way you write and remember us, and then coming back to Another Brooklyn, because obviously, the writing shifts, given the audience. And for me, as a reader, Brown Girl Dreaming is a nice bridge, because it is a memoir, written inverse, which, okay, not an easy thing to do. Like, just not an easy thing to do versus hard enough, but then you’ve got to sustain it for an entire manuscript.

And then you have to create a narrative arc with it, and…

All of it, all of it. So I mean, for me that sort of sits between what you’re doing though, with, Remember Us, and Another Brooklyn, I just want to talk about language and voice for a second, because you do you write picture books for tiny people, we’ve got Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn for the older set. And then we’ve got this beautiful range of stuff in between, for young readers that treats them like, they understand what’s happening. Like, I’m just thinking also to Harbor Me, which is a book that I really quite like of yours. Each of these kids is so individual, but I mean, talking about putting the frog in the boiling water and turning up the temperature. But yeah, can we talk about the creation of the voice for a second, because it is very distinct. And yet I know when I’m reading you.

You and AI, right. So everything I write, I have to read out loud, yeah. And it has to sound a certain way in the air and has to feel a certain way in the air. So when I am reading, if I don’t have an emotional connection to the words, they get changed, and I really, I don’t love adjectives. And I love whitespace I think it’s okay to breathe when you’re reading, it’s okay to rest when you’re reading. And also to do that when you’re writing. And so when I have these moments that are pretty intense, then there is this exhale, right? There’s this way in which I write so you can just take a breath move through the moment, in this case, we’re talking about grief too, but not experience it. And I think that’s the thing that people are very scared about is having an experience that’s going to feel some kind of way that they don’t want to feel and I think that’s the only way we can have a catharsis is to move through the moment and get to the other side of that, and know that on the other side. We’re still okay, if not a little bit deeper.

Yeah, I mean, I’m one of those people who also I genuinely believe that when you enjoy a moment, right, whether it’s joy, its happiness, exhibit, whatever, you kind of do need that reminder of what’s on the flip side in order to have the beauty and the potency, like, life is not one dimensional. And I would like it not to be one dimensional. And the idea that somehow we can’t have sadness, or grief, or melancholy, or bittersweetness or whatever you want to call it. In fiction, like, I would like to feel all of the things that’s why I read. I want to I don’t necessarily and also like, I can insert a joke here again, about being raised outside of Boston. It’s like, well, factory settings are we don’t have feelings, right? Like we don’t know how to do this. That’s why gin was invented. At the same time, though, it gives kids a space, right? Give them a book, it gives them space to figure out how they might feel about something without the pressure of the outside world or their peers or parents or siblings. I mean, older siblings Hi, we can be pushy. Like it gives you a chance to figure out what you genuinely think about a thing. And I love that in the world and everything else. And, you know, again, to see this sort of continuum for you in the work, and coming back to girlhood and coming back to who becomes invisible, right. It’s encouraging. It’s joyful. I mean, yeah, there are moments where not great stuff happens. But that’s also life. Like, you know, we’re not curating our existence on Instagram. Oh, man, getting in just the pretty pictures, right? Like, you know, I’m guilty of that as anyone elses. I mean, there are plenty of times where I’m like, yeah, that picture is never going out. And. And it’s fine. But to be able to create a sense of community right with words. I just, we get to do some cool stuff in the book business, right?

I’m grateful for every day, I just, I don’t want to ever have to imagine not being able to tell stories. I remember with them, Each Kindness. And Each Kindness is the story of two girls. And one is not kind and the ending of it. I remember when I discovered that books don’t have to have a happy ending, as long as there’s hope somewhere in the book, right? And I read it to the surrogate class, and this kid was so mad at me, but he stood up, he’s like, that would never happen. So we have this whole commerce station about it. And his teacher emailed me later and said, he came back and he borrowed the book can read it again. And she’s like, he just wanted to read it again. By the end of the week, he had read the book about five times. And it was his favorite book. But it was so interesting that he had to go through this rage of how dare you not have something on the next page, like every fairy tale I’ve read till this moment, and that moment where we leave the world of fairy tales into realistic fiction, and the world changes I definitely believe for the better because it helps us understand our every day to find the details of your life, right?

Or the truth of the details of your life in the details of someone else’s. I mean, that’s kind of the magic of a book, right? Like when you can find a thing and you’re like, I have nothing in common with what and then suddenly you’re like, oh, oh, that phrase emotional truth.

So true, it’s true.

You know, and I feel like world building has been sort of handed over to sci fi fantasy, you know, that kind of, and world building actually has to happen in the context of any novel, right? Like, you have to have a sense of time, you have to watch the progression of time and to be able to dance between fiction for younger readers and, and adults. And the way you just have to shift your understanding of time, right? Because I mean, kids are just like, oh, my god an hour, are you kidding me? Nine years are like a summer day. We were kids, we after camp, we’d be sent out and I was like, I don’t want to see you until the end of the day, she actually had a bell that she would ring. And when it was time for us to be back and she’s like, okay, and you could hear the bell from wherever we were but we were that gang of kids, right? Like you’re out in the world or you’re you know, sailing a little boat in the harbor, whatever. And like, not home until the very end of the day.

I remember my grandmother was always inside or outside and if you were going to be inside you know, find a book somewhere inside so that it seemed like you were outside because you weren’t bothered. And if you’re outside, stay outside, and we had you know, a parameter we had four or five blocks that we could be on. But and we knew not to cross those lines, but do not come back inside like go you know, here’s some snap money be home when the streetlights come on.

That generational divide too, I mean, parents in the 70s, I won’t say it was raised by wolves entirely. But I mean, parenting in the 70s was slightly different. 70s and 80s like it was slightly different than it is now but watching the adults find their feet. Right so just mom is trying to figure out what she wants. Certainly August’s dad. I kind of miss August’s dad he’s doing the best he can and a really, I’m not entirely sure he can make ice but he’s gonna raise those kids and it’s wonderful to see right and dad being dad and little brother being little brother, right the framework is you and what you remember and sort of turning these ideas around. But how much of that is the characters also just saying well, this is who I am.

Yeah, so much and I don’t outline, I mean that there’s some point where I have to start scaffolding the story and trying to figure out what he’s trying to say. But I do give the characters that grace, I always think they’re going to reveal themselves to me, the more I write, the more I sit with them, the more I read out loud, I’m going to understand who they are. I feel like if I outlined I would fight with my characters, like, No, this is what you’re supposed to do. And I remember Cornelius Ed, who was one of my favorite poets in the world, saying, sometimes the story knows more than you do about what it’s trying to say. And having that be this kind of door opening for me like wait a second, I can let my story lose control and not get really nervous about it. So it did allow for a certain freedom to create people in a different way.

It’s so wild to hear you say, let a story get a little out of control, because you’ve right very tightly held up a copy of the finished copy or Remember Us and I mean, you write very tightly, you know what you want to do. And that’s even with whitespace on the page, which I do as a reader, I appreciate, you know, there’s some books that are meant to be longer, there are some books that meant, but you seem to have found the sweet spot for you, as a creator for you as the writer, and I realized Brown Girl Dreaming is slightly longer. But again, that’s a formatting thing. You seem to have this sort of inner compass, for how long you need to tell a story. And sometimes it’s really hard to write short. Sometimes it’s really hard to get these sort of dreamy vignettes. And obviously, there’s a little more structure when you’re writing, you know, for the 10 to 12 to 13, or nine to 13.

Yeah, it used to be it used to be 10 to 13, then it was nine to 13, then it was 10. And up sometimes is 12. Enough, okay.

But you do I mean, there’s a little more formal structure. I mean, it seems to me, and this really just comes from reading lots of bedtime stories to nieces and nephews, kids like repetition. They like having structure to a story, they might want funny voices. Do the funny voices, I’m happy to read with, you know, expression and emotion. But please don’t make me do funny voices. But you do have a little more freedom in something like Another Brooklyn where we can fill in the gaps more, I think, then a younger reader would.

Definitely, I feel like with the books for adults, I expect my reader to meet me halfway with their own experiences and fill in those fill in the whitespace. Fill in what’s left unsaid. And I do believe that reading is the conversation between the author and the reader that it shouldn’t be like television where everything is packed up and answered nicely. By the end of the book, I think a good book leaves you leaves you up asking and this is for young people or adults, you’re asking questions, you’re, it’s resonating long after you’ve closed it. You’re thinking about the characters. Like me, that is a book that i i remember when I read Jesmyn Ward Sing, Unburied Sing many years ago, and just like I’m ruined, I can’t read anything else for a couple of months, because nothing else is going to do all these things to me. And that is the end. I know she’s she doesn’t she’s not a spare writer. But she is a writer who leaves questions inside the narrative and this way that you do feel like there was a conversation going on. So for me, it means deleting a lot going back and tightening. And I read that way too. If people have if I read a page and someone says the woman wore a purple dress, why is that? Just purple? Why are you telling me that? How is this going to pay off at the end of this chapter? And it’s hard to read without being interrupted by the words that don’t need to be there.

Yeah, no, I got it. And actually, as you were talking about Sing Unburied Sing, I was like, I wonder if Jojo is okay. I still think about that book. And I still think as a kid. Yeah. And I mean, like, literally as you were talking just like, Yeah. Boy, I mean, but that’s the beauty right? When you get pulled into a story that that visceral because I remember being completely destroyed by that book. And my personal Top 10 sort of rotates? You know, I don’t I don’t have a top 10 list that’s fixed. Except for that that book is always yes. I’m not entirely sure necessarily what’s and certainly things shift around it. But that will never ever leave my sort of personal mental list because of what she does in that book. And I think, again, when you look at sort of the mix of sort of a little bit of magic realism, and certainly, you know, the social realism that we get when we’re reading her but ultimately it always comes back to the language which is what happens to me when I’m reading you Ultimately, it always comes back to language. And I do believe there’s a book for everyone. But language is really important for me. I really, I don’t necessarily need stuff to happen. When you get language, and character and stuff happens, I mean, that’s great. But I am I need language, I need to know that the writer is invested in telling the story in a new way. And that’s when it comes down to language.

And at the same time, it has to be that balance where the language doesn’t get in the way of the story, right? It’s like, oh, you’re trying too hard. You really didn’t have to talk about that cloud that way, because so there is that balance for me.

And reading out loud, clearly. I mean, I read a lot of copy. And even when you’re writing copy of like, does this pass the sniff test. And if it sounds weird coming out of your own mouth? We need and literally, I’m talking about, like, maybe three sentences. I would just like those three sentences to be better, then I just don’t want to settle. Like I just I think when we’re talking about books, and I’m not, I’m not saying sacred objects. It’s not that it’s just I have a ridiculously great job. I get to talk about words and ideas and readers. And you know, my eyes get bigger thinking about it. I am a person who likes to go to work.

Oh, man, I know, I’m, I’m sitting here and I’m looking at all the books behind you. And it’s like, oh, yeah, I read that. I read that. That’s so cool. And you read you read a lot?

I do. I do. I do. I’m really lucky. I’ve read very quickly. And I can retain a lot and that’s partially how we get this. This is just the New York studio and this is just the books behind me are just the books that we featured on the show since anyone when we started then there’s some you can’t see because the cameras the camera, but Nana Kwame Adjei Brenyah and Chain Gang All Stars and you know, there’s Trust is in here somewhere. There’s some really, there’s some amazing work coming out. And, again, I do believe there is a book for everyone. But I get really excited when I got a writer who’s playing with time, or playing with memory and our experience of the past, right, like this is something you do. I think you pretty much do it in every book, whether we know it or not. But there’s always this sort of thrumming sense of history and how we’ve repeated our choices.

It’s so interesting, I remember writing If You Come Softly, which was a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, and this was in the 90s. And I remember the pushback for that book, because one of the main characters gets killed in a case of mistaken identity by cops and the Black boy, and people saying this would not have because it was before social media and the Black community knew about it, other Black and Brown communities knew and other people didn’t, then how looking at that book now it would look like I’m headline chasing with something like behind you, which was the sequel to that book, really wanting to put New York on the map, like the love song we had for New York, especially post 911. Even though 911 had nothing to do with that book, the grief that I was feeling as one who had lost people in 911 got poured into what it feels like what it felt like for my characters to lose someone. And so for me, that was a way to deal with the grief and to heal from it. And to understand that, you know, our ancestors go on and on even the young ones, but I do feel like I’m such I have such a love for Brooklyn, New York through its many iterations that I always want to write about it. And like Another Brooklyn, which I know we’ve talked about before, is nonfiction, poetry and fiction that trying to do all that in one book. But it really was speaking to the Bushwick that had existed before it was quote, unquote, discovered, because I got so offended when younger hipster people would say, I just discovered this new neighborhood. It’s like, No, we live there. And before us, it was like, you know that these, these places still exist and continue to exist in a Park Slope to I mean, of the different Park Slope. And when you look at a book like which talks about people coming to the city and working three or four jobs to own a brown stone, and then looking at what became of those brown stones but not having the history of people coming, white folks coming in and offering people cash for those brown stones and then people think that was a lot of money at the time, and all of that History is so important to me being connected to the place and not wanting Yeah, it to be repeated and people to forget that something happened here before they got here.

Yeah, I mean, that sense of being rooted, I think is so important. I mean, I make jokes about New England and being a New Englander and whatnot, but you really have a sense of time and history and what gets left out of conversations are things that we weren’t taught or how we were taught things like, you know, you finally sort of make your way in the world, right? And you’re like, Oh, you never mentioned that piece. Oh, ha, hmm. Okay. And to be able to fill in the blanks, right? Like, that’s what every young reader is looking to do. They’re just trying to figure out how to make sense. I mean, yes.

I looked for ours.

Did you ever find it?

I found it in the Park Slope house. But not, when I was growing up in Bushwick.

Okay, you know, it’s one of those things, but I’m like, we should have one. It doesn’t make all of the sense in the world, you know, to have that kind of connection. Right? Yeah. It’s amazing. To have this grounded sense, right? Like I can make fun of, you know, the factory settings that come with being in New England or…

Yeah, just the fact that I mean, that family was so different from my own and not and yet not, right, because we have the connection of the city, we have the connection of siblings, and all these ways in which you found yourself inside other people’s stories.

Listen, I had a serious thing for a Little House on the Prairie when I was a kid, because obviously, I didn’t know enough to have the context. But I really wanted a sod house in the backyard and went outside. No, I went outside with a trowel. And my parents were like, yeah, please don’t do it. Well, if the if the ceiling if the roof collapses on you, like, really, it could be a bad thing. I was like, no, no, I really want to stand outside. And there was a standoff eventually, I think they won. But you know, Wind in the Willows, all of these things, right. Anne of Green Gables, it just gets you to a place where story becomes bigger than the thing you’re holding, in your hand. Like story becomes a tool of organizing story becomes a tool of creating family.

Yeah, and community.

And it’s just like, oh, yeah…

It’s so funny. I wrote this, I’m writing this piece about food, and my friend, Maria, and learning about Puerto Rican food, and how that wasn’t just food, it was a whole family, right? Even inside your own culture. When you step into not only the books, but the experiences of real people, like you do gain family, you do gain all of this access to a culture that in some ways, become a part of your own. I mean, Maria, and you met her in Brown Girl Dreaming, and we’re still really close. But looking back on that moment in Bushwick, where we shared everything, we shared books, we shared clothes, we shared food, and, and I think, if I, if we hadn’t moved on my blog, if I hadn’t had the books I had, if I hadn’t had the family I had, it would have been such a homogenous life in so many ways. But there is this way in which all of these doors opened to us because of our openness. And I do think that openness starts with literature.

It does. It really, really does. It does not I can guarantee this. It does not start with penny loafers. I mean, there was some homogenous culture thing happening. And that’s another conversation for you. And I at some point, because it will really….

With pennies or without?

Without, but there was some pink. Yeah. What’s next? I mean, you seem to go back and forth between…

I’m working on what I have right here, my next adult book, I start, you know, I’m trying to get it done. I’m trying to get a draft of it done by the end of September, I mean, limit them, it’s gonna take a long time to get the next draft and the next draft, but I’m back, I’m excited to be back to the world of adult literature and be able to end it, you know, it takes place during the 80s and visual art community, which is 80s and 90s, which is a community I know about because I lived in Provincetown for five years in the 90s. But it’s interesting to write about what you don’t know, you know, because I’m not a visual artist and the discovery and that is so great. I mean, August. I’m not an anthropologist either, but able to get August on the page, so I’m hopeful.

I also I would love to see more literature set in the 80s. And I’m just going to shout out Ayana Mathis’ The Unsettled, because a big chunk of it happens in the 80s in Philadelphia, and it’s just out. Lisa Ko, also during the 80s and that’s March, I think, March of 2024. But part of the whole 80s thing when I look at the 80s, I’m just like high the 80s do explain this moment we’re in? And could we take that forgetting that the 80s happened for one, and two, like, really all of the structural things that are happening in our society that are really, really broken? They started being broken in the 80s. And there’s this sort of, I don’t know, it’s, it’s this collective amnesia, willfulness? And I’m just like, it’s all right there. It literally starts, and this is gonna go there. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, there’s, there’s just, there’s a lot of great work happening across the spectrum, whether we’re talking about the short set or young readers or, you know, for adult readers or whatnot, there’s so much you can do in a book to talk about what’s happening in our culture and what’s happening with us as human beings, right? Like, it’s a really flexible medium, it’s a really wild medium. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s sticky for kind of thing that tattoos itself on the back of your brain. Like, I get to do this every day.

So great, no matter what, no matter who’s saying stop doing it. So it’s amazing. So can I ask you a question aside from the Ayana Mathis his book which I am immediately buying? Can you give me some other reading suggestions?

Bryan Washington Family Meal, which is not out until October, so I’m sorry to make you wait, but I’m also Justin Torres Blackout?

He has a new book out? Oh, my God.

Yes, he does. And he does some wild stuff with story. And I’m going to tease you a little bit and just say, when I started reading it, the first thing I thought about was sort of 1950s kind of dreamy, John Fontaine, kind of like we’re in the desert kind of thing. And it is quickly shown that this is not in fact, where we are. But what he does with story and who gets to tell stories, and how we get to tell stories but I’m also bringing it up for you. Because when you mentioned working in the visual arts for the next book, there are illustrations in Blackouts that are photographs, and some blackout poetry and it’s a book book, and it does all of the things that we want to do. And Bryan Washington, that guy, you haven’t read Memorialgo read Memorial too, and I know you’ve read Memorial.

I’ve read Memorial and you know, Family Meal, halfway through, I just he just keeps doing he just keeps bringing it. So here for it.

He also has discovered whitespace in, Family Meal, I’m waiting on the physical like he’s using it in a different way. He’s using it in a really, really different way in this particular book. And I think you might not be exactly there yet. But I promise you, you will see it when you will know. And again, like voice is a thing, right? Like you have this great warm narrative voice and yet all of your characters have really distinct voices. The other book I want to rant about for a second is Temple Folk.

Oh, yes. Stories. Yes, I blurbed it.

Oh, okay. So you’ve read it. See, this is what happens when you read things without covers. I’m notorious for taking words on the page, as I call it, and I get things in all sorts of different shape when they read that book that was listed. I think it is long list. And there’s a lot of good stuff on the long list there. And also, do you know Caleb Azumah Nelson. He’s a Brit. And he is also a filmmaker, as well as being a novelist, photographer, filmmaker, and a novelist. Small Worlds is set in London, but it’s a Gandhian community. And it’s like the perfect and I realized we’re coming out of summertime, but I’m recommending it anyway, because it’s a way to extend summertime. It’s one of those perfect summer novels. Music is a big deal. Caleb actually turned me on to this British rapper called Dave.

His name is Dave.

Dave is the rapper. Yeah, it’s just Dave. Just Dave is

a British rapper as we age here who’s Little Dickie?

You know, different Dave. Super different day but Caleb, he’s at the very end of the end. It’s a very hits maybe 220 pages. Oh, sure. He flips the narrative voice at the end of the book in a way that made me pay attention. Let’s Wow. He’s a really he’s. Yeah, I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does next. But the way he does the immigrant story too, because again, like, right, there are only so many ways to tell a story. So if you get the language, right, the language right and it’s just there’s a lot of swing and it’s I will say he does, right sort of very cinematically, there’s a lot in the book. So those are the ones I would say, you know, but let’s temple folks. Listen, also Justin Torres is on is on the long list, too. There. There’s a lot of work out there. This has been a really good year for books.

That’s so exciting. Yeah, I’m, I was excited to see all the list because I was like, there are some really good books here. Thank you. And Thank you, right? Because y’all are doing your thing. And it’s just in terms of the span of storytelling was just really fabulous. You know, the diversity, the ways people that tell his story, I’m so excited.

in the voice, right? It’s up to them to shortlist. These voices, man, it’s these, the plurality of voices.

Do you do audiobooks?

yeah, I read in any format. So I spent a lot of time on planes still. So I do read electronically. I just prefer when I’m prepping for the show. I prefer paper because that way, I can write all over everything and dog your things. And well, actually, so as I mentioned to you, I reread Brooklyn last night. And so there’s, there’s a lot happening now in this annotated copy. I will revisit things in audio that I’ve already read, when I’m prepping for the show, just to see if I catch something new, you know, electronically. I can do it. And fit all of the books you physically I mean, you spend a lot of time on the road to you can’t carry everything you want to carry. But I do find that I engage with words differently when I’m holding a thing and can write on them. And I know you can annotate things on the screen. I understand these things. I can’t I just I need a pencil. And I also I love a sharp pencil. Yes, yes. So I you know, and also when you’re on a plane, like a sharp pencil won’t explode in your hand and get ink all over

I started doing that.

It’s a much easier way to travel and be able to whip out notes really quickly. Because also, I don’t always want to pull out my phone and type a note. Sometimes I actually physically need to just write.

Thank you for that note about pen. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Jacqueline Woodson, it is always so good to see you. This is great. Thank you so much for making the time because I know you’re doing this from the road. So it’s always really good to see you, Remember Us is out October 10. And really, if you have tiny people, you really do need this book. And also if you’re an adult with tiny people, you should read it with your tiny people because there’s a lot for you in this book to like this is not limited to the 10 to 13 or the nine to 13 There’s a lot if you haven’t Brown Girl Dreaming, certainly. And of course, Red at the Bone and Another Brooklyn which as you can tell I’m very very fond of. Jacqueline was so good to see you. Thank you so much.

To me that Thank you. Thanks for having me. I adore you.