Woodson and Home

 Nathan Galloway

10/20/2020

brown girl dreaming

            The ideas of Home and memory in Jaqueline Woodson’s story brown girl dreaming drive the main character’s perception of the world around her. Jackie has a complicated relationship with how she sees Home. The implicit point that Woodson makes in her story is that Home lies within the memory of the individual. 

Jackie feels Home in so many different places and in different ways, it is impossible to argue that her perception of Home lies solely in a geographical space with four walls and a roof. She experiences Home in multiple ways. The most obvious way is going back to Greenville, the place that she often calls “Home”. However, we can trace her Greenville Home to New York. The poem titled “Herzel Street” shows how Home can be transported (Woodson, 145). People from Greenville that are living in Jackie’s neighborhood are able to recreate home for her.

Jackie sometimes feels disconnected from her home even within the geographic borders of her own town. Her family is discriminated against in town because of the color of their skin. This disconnects her from her home and reshapes the emotional connection she has to Home. 

Home is not permanent, and Home is permeable. Jacqueline’s Home changes when she goes to New York. She creates roots in the city and feels Home with her “friend forever and ever amen” Maria. She attaches herself to Maria like she did to Greenville. However, her attachment to Greenville remains which proves that the borders of Home are not merely geographic. 

Woodson makes the point that when we find ourselves missing Home, all we need to do is look within our memories, our stories, and the world around us to rediscover Home. As Jacqueline says, “But on paper, things can live forever” (249). 

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