Jacqueline Woodson: United States ⋆ Author

Jacqueline Woodson was born in 1963 in Columbus, Ohio. She was raised by her mother and grandmother, as her parents separated when she was a child. Woodson spent the first seven years of her life in South Carolina, and then moved to New York. Since then, she has chosen to reside in New York; however, her life and work are characterized by her dual experience of the American South and the North. As a child, Jacqueline was encouraged to read extensively, and her encounters with books motivated her to be a writer. Woodson earned a BA at Adelphi University at Long Island, NY, where she focused on literature studies to prepare her for writing.

Woodson's work is eclectic in nature. She has authored children's literature in the form of picture books, but she also has written novels for adolescents and young adults. She has even written one novel for young adults in verse form. Woodson, even when not writing in verse, is especially attentive to the fluidity and lyricism of her style. She often uses dialect and repetition to elevate her prose. As an African-American author, Woodson's employment of dialect captures the language and spirit of the place she comes from: "It tells its own story, our language does, and woven through it are all the places we've been, all that we've seen, experiences held close, both good and bad."

The poetic use of dialect in her work—dialect that tells of experiences "both good and bad"—is fitting and indicative of Woodson's attention to both the beauty and harshness of human experience. Her narratives deal with many sensitive issues, such as racial tension, drug abuse, sexual abuse, sexuality, and more. However, Woodson addresses difficult issues because she believes that these stories are important to tell, and the telling of a story is the first step towards reconciliation and wellness. Even so, sometimes Woodson's stories do not end on a note of healing, as she seeks to teach young readers about the potential irreversibility of certain hurtful behaviours. Thus, for example, in her 2012 picture book Each Kindness, a girl who has been unkind to another classmate does not get the opportunity to make amends, even though she seeks to. Despite the cautionary nature of such episodes, Woodson's work is primarily characterized by the presence of hope for positive change in the world.