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" The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.' "

Jacqueline Woodson

Mom

Great

Mother

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" I think people are willing to talk about anything if you come to it with kindness. "

" 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. "

" Each book I write is a shout into the silence and a prayer and a plea for change. "

" The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Life

You

" The Great Migration can get forgotten if we don't pay attention or bear witness to it. It's part of my personal history and the history of millions of African Americans who left those oppressive conditions for better lives in the North. It's important to put that on the page. "

" 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. "

" If you have no road map, you have to create your own. "

" 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. "

" When I'm feeling frustrated with a story, I have faith that it's going to come. Also, when I first started writing, I wanted to write the stories that were not in my childhood, to represent people who hadn't historically been represented in literature. "

" Friendship is such an important thing to me, and I feel like the people who I love and help keep me whole - I can't imagine a life without them. "

" The hardest part is telling one's story. Once the story is on the page, the rest will come. "

" I deeply believe in many Christian values: love people; do the right thing; know that there's good in everyone, that God's looking out for all of us. "

" 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. "

" My family is big, complicated, and beautiful - and keeps me smiling and whole. It's so important to have family, whether it's biological family, good friends, foster families, or a group of aunties who are raising you. The idea of feeling isolated is scary to me - to walk through the world alone would be heartbreaking. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Alone

Family

" I realized if I didn't start talking to my relatives, asking questions, thinking back to my own beginnings, there would come a time when those people wouldn't be around to help me look back and remember. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Start

Help

" I didn't have any idea of what I was getting into by going away to college. And I was scared. I was scared of failing. I was scared of it not being for me because I was going to be one of the first people in my family to go off to college. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Scared

People

" 'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Story

Book

" The South was very segregated. I mean, all through my childhood, long after Jim Crow was supposed to not be in existence, it was still a very segregated South. "

" My grandparents were wealthy; my mom was not. I would walk into these worlds of privilege and then walk back into this other world. My little brother is biracial. So race and economic class and sexuality - these were always issues that were a part of my life. "

" People who are living in economic struggle are more than their circumstances. They're majestic and creative and beautiful. "

" If someone has something they're really passionate about, that's their brilliance, and my big question is how do we grow that passion/brilliance and/or help them grow. "

" What I write comes from a place of deep love, and a deep understanding of all kinds of otherness. "

" Diversity is about all of us, and about us having to figure out how to walk through this world together. "

Jacqueline Woodson

Walk

Diversity

" Both racism and homophobia come from a sense of the presumed and the unknown. "