Another Brooklyn

Plot

The story starts with August, an adult anthropologist, returning to New York to bury her father. On the subway, she encounters an old friend, and beings to reminisce. She remembers being a young 8 year old girl moving with her father and younger brother to Brooklyn from Tennessee after the death of her mother. The book then follows August's teenage years. The book covers her friends Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi. August shares friendships with three other young New Yorkers in Brooklyn, walking through the neighborhoods and dreaming optimistically of the future, and what it held in store for them. August and her friends also face dangers on the streets, and family strife of various types.

Reviews

The book received many reviews. To The Washington Post, it is a "short but complex story that arises from simmering grief. It lulls across the pages like a mournful whisper." Publishers Weekly writes that it is a "a vivid mural of what it was like to grow up African-American in Brooklyn during the 1970s."

NBC News wrote that it "weaves together themes of death, friendship, Black migrations, the sense of displacement that usually follows, and family." The New York Times said "the subject isn’t as much girlhood, as the haunting half-life of its memory." Kaitlyn Greenidge for The Boston Globe wrote that the book was "a love letter to loss, girlhood and home. It is a lyrical, haunting exploration of family, memory and other ties that bind us to one another and the world." USA Today gave it 3 of 4 stars.

The Los Angeles Times said that the book "joins the tradition of studying female friendships and the families we create when our own isn’t enough, like that of Toni Morrison’s 'Sula,' Tayari Jones’ 'Silver Sparrow' and 'Zami: A New Spelling of My Name' by Audre Lorde. Woodson uses her expertise at portraying the lives of children to explore the power of memory, death and friendship."