Jacquline Woodson

When I started reading my first book by Jacqueline Woodson I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. First of all, her main character was nothing like me, rich, popular, living with a single parent, and black. Secondly, I got the feeling this book was going to have a lot of uncomfortable topics in it. After I read the book I was amazed at the quality of literature available for pre-teens and adolescents. It was wonderful! No, I didn’t really make any meaningful connections with either of the main characters, but the book was full of drama, the kind that gets your pulse racing and emotions flowing. Yes, I was uneasy during parts of the book, but it made me think, is that really bad? Why shouldn’t I be uncomfortable? These are awful topics and they happen every day. The more I thought about it, the more I believed if I were comfortable with these things such as child molestation, racism, and class systems, there would be something horribly wrong with me. Uncomfortable is good and we need to make people uncomfortable more often. We can’t just brush these things under the rug like they’re nothing, or only happen to people no one knows. All Woodson’s books address, not just one or two, but several “controversial” topics such as, rape, sexual identity, racism, class-ism, death, and suicide. Yes, all these topics make us squeamish. We don’t want to bring it up and we don’t want to listen about it because that makes them all the more real to those of us fortunate enough to have not experienced them. But they are real. They are real and they happen all the time. The reason we don’t hear about it more often is because we as a society have decided these topics distress people unaccustomed to them and no one wants to be distressed so they get deemed taboo. Unfortunately this then works against those who need help with these issues. We make victims feel that if they do break the unwritten rule and say something like this is happening, no one will believe them anyway. Instead of lending our arms and voices to assist these people, we shut them out so we don’t feel unpleasant. This is not how our society should run and this is not how I want my classroom run. I want my students experiencing these things to know its okay to talk and I want my students who don’t know what these things are like to be aware that it goes on. This way everyone can better help each other.