Book Review: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson

‘Another Brooklyn’ by Jacqueline Woodson was released in 2016 and tells a moving story of girlhood, of friendship and grief. I loved how grief and loss manifested for these characters in multiple ways.

August, our protagonist is an anthropologist and has studied the culture of death across the world as it allowed her to understand her own grieving.

After Uncle Clyde was drafted to serve in Vietnam, and was killed in action, August’s mother slipped away, consumed by her own anguish and grief. Her mental health shattered and she couldn’t cope. Her partner left with her kids, and August was whisked away from her home in SweetGrove and moved to Brooklyn, assured that when their mother felt better, she’d join them.

August clung to that hope, and never accepted that perhaps this was a method to placate the children.

A few years after they moved to Brooklyn, her father came home with an urn. And August refused to believe her mother was in it.

There is a lot of trauma to unpack in this story. It is a beautifully written letter to grief: grieving over relationships, over people, over opportunities. It was a declaration that August would acknowledge her father’s death. She would feel the loss. She would grieve for Brooklyn, for her brother. It was a very sad book that made me want to sob. It’s just filled with loss.

Before August’s mother died, she told her not to trust women. Women were untrustworthy, opportunistic and vicious. And yet, August fell in love with friendship and the togetherness that came form being with the girls she befriended. She loved Sylvia, and Gigi and Angela. August learned what it was to be a woman in a city, and loved furiously.

She loved her friends, despite the hurt and betrayal she felt during their childhood. And although their lives went in different directions, she still celebrated their lives and their joy. It shows the complexity of yearning and loss, wanting but not having in so many different memories. This short, punchy book had me in bits, grappling with emotions I couldn’t even articulate. I loved how August punctuates points with examples of how grief manifests around the world. There is no one way to grieve the loss of something or someone. It was such a powerful story, and I’d definitely recommend it.