Writing for young people gave me a lot more patience
when it came to writing for adults.
Oh! Does being a mom even help when you write children?
You know, I'll write something and say it's funny.
And my son will be like, "That's not funny, Mommy."
And he'll say, "Don't say that."
- Built-in consumer research. - Yeah.
I am so excited to meet Jacqueline Woodson.
This is just the coolest experience.
I am so super stoked about it.
Being an African-American woman, part of the LGBTQ community,
and having those open dialogues with her was amazing.
( theme music playing )
I'm Ebony. Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you.
As we all know, "BookTube" is such
a special, vibrant community of readers
who come together around the love of books and reading.
And how lucky are we that we get to...
- We are very lucky. - ...be here with the Jacqueline Woodson.
- Yes. - Yay!
Let's just give her a round of applause.
And also, shout out to Brooklyn.
- Yes! - Yay!
Because this is the home of so much of your work,
right here on this soil.
So to be able to talk to you in Brooklyn
- is really special. - Both: Mm-hmm.
You've written over 30 books.
- I have. - You've also been the National Ambassador
for Young People's Literature for two years.
- No big deal. - I know, right?
And back there I learned that she's always working
on multiple books at a time.
- Yes. - You write for children.
You write for adults. You write for young adults.
You write poetry.
You write picture books.
- And you write novels. - Yes.
You do it all. You know, one thing that was beautiful
about "Brown Girl Dreaming"
is that we got introduced
to your early love of words.
So, I'd love to just hear you talk a little bit
about your early love of writing, where it all started,
and how it sort of shaped you in your career.
Great question to start with.
I was a really slow reader.
I still am a really slow reader.
And as a kid I got in trouble for lying all the time.
And it's interesting-- I had a teacher who said,
"Instead of lying, write it down.
'Cause it's fiction. It's not a lie anymore."
And I feel like that's one of the things I go back to,
is that moment where my stories became legitimized, right?
They weren't something that I wasn't supposed to do anymore.
They became fiction.
And the fact that I grew up in a family where,
you know, we weren't allowed to curse.
There were so many words we were not allowed to say.
That also expanded on how powerful words were,
so those were some of the early ideas
around thinking about becoming a writer.
So, "Brown Girl Dreaming,"
it's a memoir about your life...
- Mm-hmm. Yes. - ...from when you were born.
What was that process like in gathering all those memories?
Oh, man. I looked at a lot of pictures.
I did a lot of interviews.
Um, I had planned to write this whole story
about coming of age as a writer,
and just writing down every single memory I had.
And then I figured, when I didn't have anymore memories,
I'd ask my mom, I'd ask my siblings.
And then I went researching for more.
How long did this whole process take?
That book took about four years from the time I started.
- Wow! - Yeah, I think my editor and I
stopped counting at 30 rewrites.
Like, there were so many poems that--
'cause once you write it, once I had all the memories,
I had to give them that narrative arc, right?
And then I had to go back to each verse, to each poem,
and shape it so that the line breaks made sense,
so that you wanted to go from line to line to line.
Jacqueline, in both of your books,
"Brown Girl Dreaming" and "Red at the Bone,"
you see how the story sort of shifts
depending on who's talking and who you're asking.
Kind of like real life, you know?
It's different interpretations of the same event.
So, can you talk about your exploration of memory?
My memory is the truth, in terms of memoir,
and I that's the case for any writer.
With writing fiction, it's more complicated,
because as the author,
I kind of have to think about whose is the truth,
and I don't always know.
Is there ever a truth
- when you're writing fiction? - I don't think there is.
I don't think there is. I think there are a lot of questions.
And I always say I write 'cause I have questions,
not 'cause I have answers.
For me, as a journalist,
I was trained to tell the truth,
and that's why I marvel at novelists like yourself
because I can appreciate a novel,
but I could never imagine writing one
because you're fictionalizing all of these characters.
So to me it's like magic.
It really is like magic. How do you do it?
Do these characters just come to you
and introduce themselves in a dream?
Like, how does it happen for you?
I have a sense of who I want to put on the page,
and it doesn't always happen that way.
And I kind of write asking,
"Well, what does this character want
and how are they going to get it?"
And the truth is somewhere in there.
It's a complex weaving of characters and their stories
and their backstories and their desires.
So, we gotta talk about your new novel "Red at the Bone."
- Um, it's so gorgeous. - Thank you.
Just so gorgeously written.
For your fans at home who have not
had the opportunity yet to read "Red at the Bone,"
give us a little taste.
Oh, man. It tells the story
of two African-American families coming together
across lines of class and across histories.
And it's a story about loss, it's about love.
It's about teenage pregnancy.
It's about what it means to be a woman
making certain choices at a particular time.
Um, and it's about legacy.
The phrase "Red at the Bone," um, you know,
it comes up when Iris was first talking
about her first queer relationship.
- Mm-hmm. - And it really struck me
as a person who came out in college,
and you're experiencing things that maybe you felt before
but it sort of feels like the first time,
and I think it's such a deeply raw experience.
I'm just wondering how that became this book.
That title was with me for a long time
before I understood even why
that was the title of the book.
And when I got to Iris, who is a teenage mom,
who makes a decision to leave her family and go off to Oberlin
where she has her first experience with a woman,
and it made so much sense to me,
that moment that all of us know
where you're sliced open.
Right? Like, your world has changed forever
because of this one other person.
I mean, I hope everyone feels this
at some point in their life.
This idea of being red at the bone
does really hearken to the rawness of that emotion.
I am Cece from the YouTube Channel Problems of a Book Nerd.
It's really important to know what resources are out there
to make it as easy as possible
for everyone to have access to queer titles.
Today, we're gonna be doing some lightning round questions.
- Does that work for you? Okay, cool. - Yep.
Character in your writing that you most identify with.
All of them.
Character in another person's writing
you most identify with.
Oh, I would say
Frances in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn"
and Francie in "Daddy Was A Number Runner."
What is your guilty pleasure?
( chuckles ) Is wine a guilty pleasure?
I don't feel guilty when I drink it.
- No, no. - So, okay, so it has to be something else
that's not wine? I guess expensive wine.
- Expensive wine. - Yeah.
- Still wine. Very important. - Yes, yes.
What is the strangest job you've had?
I think it would probably be working at Burger King
'cause I don't eat fast food.
And maybe I don't eat fast food 'cause I worked at Burger King.
- Yeah. - So...
If you weren't a writer, what would you be doing?
Um...
I would probably be institutionalized.
If I had another career, I'd want to play for the NBA.
What is your favorite word?
If I had only one, I don't think I'd be a writer.
That's fair. And the last thing you do before you go to sleep.
- Read. Yes. - Read? Same.
You have your two main characters, Po Boy and Aubrey--
black fathers who completely destigmatize...
- Yes. - ...the notion that black fathers are not present,
they're absent, they leave their families.
And it was refreshing for me to see, no, this does exist.
Black fathers are around. They do raise their children.
- Yes. - Why was this important for you to write this narrative?
For those same reasons.
As a writer, I have a deep responsibility
to not only tell the truth,
but to think about the bigger message
I'm putting out there with every character I put on the page.
- Every character. - Every single character.
And I think this comes from writing for young people.
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, who is this academic
who wrote a lot about children's literature,
especially as it pertained to multicultural literature,
talked about the importance of kids
having both mirrors and windows in their literature.
So, mirrors-- they open a book and saw a part of themselves
and then said, "I could be this."
And windows so that they saw into other worlds.
And, you know, I think for a lot of kids of color,
we got a lot more windows than we did mirrors.
- That's right. - And for me, when someone comes to this book,
what message am I giving them?
What are they gonna see of themselves?
And I think again and again
that message of the absentee father is not the truth.
It's not always the truth.
There's-- I know so many amazing black dads
that are there, you know, to the bone.
I feel like it's almost cliché to write about a father who leaves,
and I don't want to write cliché.
I want to write a different kind of truth,
and the fathers who stay.
And the bigger question is how hard is it
to stay in a society that has historically
separated you through mass incarceration,
you know, through murder,
through all the ways that family--
through enslavement?
Like, all the ways that families
have historically been divided.
"Red at the Bone," it's not a tragic book,
but there are these two very intense instances of tragedy.
How did that happen?
I think the thing about the Tulsa Race Massacre,
I don't know how many of you all knew about it as young people.
- I did not. - I didn't.
Yeah, this huge thing happened
that completely annihilated
black middle classdom in Tulsa--
but how this has historically happened, right?
All these places where people are like,
"Well, how come blacks can't get it together?"
And it's like, "Duh, let's look at the history
of our lives in this country,"
and how black folks have been able to become middle class,
which is a miracle, right?
So I wanted to explore that
as the beginning of the tragedy.
But then also 9/11, I think the erasure there
is that people don't remember
how many black and brown people
were killed when the buildings came down.
And I just remember being pregnant when it was happening, and seeing the signs.
"Have you seen my son?" "Have you seen my husband?"
"Have you seen my wife? She's four months pregnant."
Just plastered all over the city.
And so I thought I would be remiss
in writing "Red at the Bone"
that takes place around that same time
and not talk about that tragedy
and the impact it had on the black families.
On this black family,
that was just as significant as the Tulsa Race Massacre.
All: Mm.
We admire the conversations in the book,
especially the conversations that parents--
it's difficult for them to have, right?
Um, this is my wife and--
That's so beautiful.
Look at that reveal.
- Married 13 years. - Oh, my goodness.
We have three kids. It's a lot.
But just even in the beginning of the story,
Melody is having a conversation
with her mother Iris about sex.
You can tell how uncomfortable it is for Melody.
And so we're thinking about that--
We want to know what made you want to add that to the book?
You know, I think one thing--
'cause I grew up in such a religious family,
talking about sex was always so uncomfortable.
And so when my partner and I decided to have kids,
that was gonna be intentional.
I want sex to be on the table and it to be transparent,
and girls to know that you deserve pleasure.
You know, imagine that world where the conversations
are out there and you're not squeamish
and wanting to crawl under something.
And so that's where that Melody conversation came from--
the mom, like, "Okay, let's talk about this,"
as well as a daughter, like, "Oh, please."
So...
Hi, I'm Ebony from the YouTube channel Team2Moms.
Hey, you guys. It's Denise.
And it's Ebony.
And we are Team2Moms.
So, I've learned a lot about you as the author,
so my questions are about the parenting side.
Our kids are being raised by two moms,
and I just want to know, do you have any advice for us?
Of course there's the literature, right?
All the books that we fill their libraries with
to show them that there are all kinds of ways to have family.
Like, there's no one right or wrong way to have family,
and I think the great thing about children's literature
is there's so much out there that represents
the many ways we have family.
I remember when my godson came home crying
'cause another kid had been like,
"Ah-ha, ha-ha! You have two moms."
And then his mother went up and she's like,
"Well, what happened to your other mom?"
( laughs )
Oh, I wish I-- my daughter actually experienced that,
and I wish I had a good comeback.
"What, you only have one mom?"
It's been a while since I've read a book.
- I have kids. - Of adult age.
Because our kids, it's Dr. Seuss.
Oh, man.
Read a lot of children's books.
What about the writing technique?
I noticed that, like, it shifts
from one character to the next character.
Like, is there like a specific name for this technique?
Telling it from multiple points of view.
I wanted it to feel like the saga it is.
I mean, it spans decades,
and each person has such a different story.
And if I had written it from the point of view
of, say, an omniscient narrator
where somebody's going into everybody's head
and just telling this, you know, one-sided story in this way,
it didn't feel like it would work
because I felt like I'd be cheating the characters
who were very rich to me.
And I wanted people to know
they were coming into the middle of something,
that this wasn't the beginning.
Cece: You could tell that, for sure.
- And her coming of age. - Yeah, it starts with,
"But that afternoon, there was an orchestra playing,"
so you know you're not even at the beginning of a sentence.
You're starting in the middle of lives here.
And having each person go back in
and talk about their early lives
or the intersections of lives
- made that feel more truthful. - Yes, I love that.
My name is Denise and I am from the YouTube channel Team2Moms.
- It is... - Both: Team2Moms.
- Peace! - Peace out!
We're gonna do a quick segment,
and it's called The Last Line.
I'm gonna have you read the last line of your book.
Cool. "Gleaming."
( both laugh )
That's the last word on the last line,
and it's its own sentence.
- And what made you end with that? - It was so hopeful.
"Red at the Bone" was such a visual book for me.
Writing it, every scene I saw,
and in that moment there's that revelation.
It just made the book so come full circle for me.
What do you think your younger self
would've thought about who you've become today?
I think what my younger self would say was,
"They're lying. You're not struggling."
You know, I think it's one of the most messed up
messages we give our kids that they have to read fast.
When, as you know, it takes us forever to write these books,
and we don't want people speeding through them.
We want them to spend time.
You know, I was reading the same things
over and over and over again
until they were like a part of me.
They were-- you know, I had them memorized
and I deeply understood them.
And that wasn't gonna happen from reading really quickly.
- Like, I want to read every single word. - You have to feel it, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you want to slow sip every sentence.
Ooh, stealing that.
I'm stealing that, too.
I don't know about you guys,
but I just feel like the greatest joy of reading
is when it can be done in community.
- Me, too. - When a book becomes part of a shared experience.
So, just thank you guys for being here.
- Thank you! - Thank you for having us.
And bringing your brilliant questions.
- And, Jacqueline, thank you. - Thank you so much.
Thank you for your work, thank you for your love,
thank you for your presence today.
- Thank you. This has been so fun. - It's been an honor.
- I'm loving these nails. - Me, too!
( laughter continues )
( crew chatter )
Oh, yeah, okay.
Book nerd photo.
( music playing )