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Jacqueline Woodson

Poetry

cover of Show Way

Poetry as History

From Show Way

When Soonie’s great grandma was seven, she was sold
from the Virginia land to a plantation in South Carolina
without her ma
or pa
but with some muslin her ma had given her and two needles
she got from the Big House and thread
dyed bright red with berries from the chokecherry tree.
In South Carolina, Big Mama raised Soonie’s great grandma
Raised most the slave children on that large patch of land….
Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is an American writer of books for adults, children, and adolescents. She is best known for her National Book Award-Winning memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, and her Newbery Honor-winning titles After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way. Her picture books The Day You Begin and The Year We Learned to Fly were NY Times Bestsellers. After serving as the Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, she was named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress for 2018–19. She was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 2020. Later that same year, she was named a MacArthur Fellow.