Establishing Written History

 

One poem that struck me in Jacqueline Woodson’s memoir entitled Brown Girl Dreaming is “the woodsons of ohio.” While reading the entirety of Woodson’s memoir, I was continually intrigued and perplexed at the author’s ability to articulate meaning in her poetry on two separate planes. In “the woodsons of ohio,” Woodson confronts her family’s history and possible relation to Thomas Jefferson. While reading, I could not help but think of the greater African American story and its lack of written history as a result of slavery and oppression. Woodson writes “the Woodsons of Ohio know / what the Woodsons coming before them / left behind, in Bibles, in stories, / in history coming down through time” (Woodson). While reading this particular stanza of the poem, a phrase that was told to me off-handedly in my high-school APUSH class appeared in my mind; “History is written by the victors.” Another way to interpret this adage is “History is written by the oppressors.” This chilling quotation in reference to Woodson’s poem made me confront my own knowledge of my family’s history in juxtaposition with the authors. I have grown up with a knowledge of a family tree that extends its roots as far back as Woodson’s goes. The only difference is I can find records and written documents that prove my history whereas the author only knows “what the Woodsons coming before them left behind, in Bibles, in stories” This realization and personal connection I made with the author placed the reality of oppression and privilege in the forefront of my mind in a unique way that individualized my lived experienced in contrast with the authors. Furthermore, the connection between the conception of ‘National Time’ and Homi Bhabha’s ‘Double-Time’ came to mind because of its intertwining with the Black experience in America through history. Since our country’s inception, Black Americans have been forced to live as ‘the other’ in American society, resulting in a schism between the National Time that is projected and used to propagandized ‘American exceptionalism’ and the Black experience in the United States. This has been a slowly changing norm and has taken a more of an expedited path consequentially following the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and our modern movement today. What gives solace to me in the realization of the atrocities that my ancestors have committed in very recent human history is the existence and academic study of this memoir. Woodson said it best in the fourth stanza of the first poem in Brown Girl Dreaming. She writes

 

I am born as the south explodes,

too many people too many years

enslaved, then emancipated

but not free, the people

who look like me

keep fighting

and marching

and getting killed

so that today---

February 12, 1963

And every day from this moment on,

brown children like me can grow up

free. Can grow up

learning and voting and walking and riding

wherever we want.

 

While the United States has a long way to go to reach true equality and to mend the wounds that still cut so deep from slavery, this stanza in conjunction with the study of Woodson’s memoir gives me hope that the adage “History is written by the victors” may someday be revised to include the other side of the paradigm. Where the stories of the second part of ‘double-time’ may be told. Jacqueline Woodson may only have hearsay records of Thomas Woodson of Chillicothe, but her descendants will have this memoir to look back on and relish in the history of their own family. The continuance of the fight for equality is necessary and trenchant. Though, the existence and study of this memoir is a mark of progress in the battle to be heard, listened to, and recorded in history.


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