Jacqueline Woodson Quotes
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I never know, when I start writing a story, what's going to happen, or how it will all get sorted out.
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People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.
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I couldn't be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because I'm pretty optimistic.
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Who are you without your girls? I truly believe that. Who are you without the people who help you make sense of the misogyny, the racism, the economic struggle, all of it? You need those people saying you're a good mom, a great writer. You're a great dresser. You cook well. Whatever the beauty is that you need to hear.
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I would have written 'Brown Girl Dreaming' if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we've come through.
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In young adult novels and children's books, you stay in moment. The story goes through a school year or a weekend. You never get a sense of a future self because the young person has not lived that yet.
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I think, even though homophobia still exists, there is much more of a dialogue and a taboo around being homophobic.
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When I was a kid, I got in trouble for lying a lot, and I had a teacher say, 'Instead of lying, write it down, because if you write it down, it's not a lie anymore; it's fiction.'
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I think that's important: to know 'the other,' as a means of coming to understanding.
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I don't want my kids to have to walk through a world where they have to constantly explain who they are and who their family is.
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I'm inspired by questions I have that I try to figure out the answers to through my writing.
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I don't believe there are 'struggling' readers, 'advanced' readers, or 'non' readers.
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As a child in South Carolina, I spent summers like so many children - sitting on my grandparents' back porch with my siblings, spitting watermelon seeds into the garden or, even worse, swallowing them and trembling as my older brother and sister spoke of the vine that was probably already growing in my belly.
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Each book I write is a shout into the silence and a prayer and a plea for change.
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With my writing, I try to do stuff I have not done before. Each time I sit down, I want to have a new experience, and by extension, I want my readers to have a different experience.
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For my family, 'black-ish' is the reward on a Thursday evening - a day after the show officially airs, when it's finally available to be streamed.
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As a person of color, as a woman, as a body moving through this particular space in time, I realize the streets of New York tell the story of resistance, an African-American history of brilliance and beauty that, even in its most brutal moments, did not - could not - kill our resilient and powerful spirit.
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I have a short attention span, so when one book isn't working out, I just work on another.
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I always say I write because I have questions, not because I have answers. It's true that you begin the conversation - that's the role of the artist. But it's not my job to tell us what to do next. I wish I had those tools.
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I feel like I am walking in some amazing footsteps of writers who have come before me, like S.E. Hinton, Walter Dean Myers, Christopher Paul Curtis, Richard Peck and Kate DiCamillo, who I love.
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My kids speak of both subtle slights and blatant racism. It's a narrative I never imagined for them.
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I think, as a kid, turning on the television and seeing that everyone seemed to be wealthy and white made me feel like an outsider, lesser than. I was not wealthy. I was not white.
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I can't write about nice, easy topics because that won't change the world. And I do want to change the world - one reader at a time.
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Greenville, S.C., in the 1970s is a rolling green dream in my memory now.