Lots and lots of books later, I am still surprised when I walk into a bookstore and see my name on a book’s binder. A lie on the page meant lots of independent time to create your stories and the freedom to sit hunched over the pages of your notebook without people thinking you were strange. So by the time the story rolled around and the words “This is really good” came out of the otherwise down-turned lips of my fifth grade teacher, I was well on my way to understanding that a lie on the page was a whole different animal - one that won you prizes and got surly teachers to smile. After lots of brouhaha, it was believed finally that I had indeed penned the poem which went on to win me a Scrabble game and local acclaim. That year, I wrote a story and my teacher said “This is really good.” Before that I had written a poem about Martin Luther King that was, I guess, so good no one believed I wrote it.
Of course I got in trouble for lying but I didn’t stop until fifth grade. I loved lying and getting away with it! There was something about telling the lie-story and seeing your friends’ eyes grow wide with wonder. Not “Once upon a time” stories but basically, outright lies. I loved and still love watching words flower into sentences and sentences blossom into stories. I chalked stories across sidewalks and penciled tiny tales in notebook margins. (It was not pretty for me when my mother found out.) I wrote on paper bags and my shoes and denim binders. I remember my uncle catching me writing my name in graffiti on the side of a building. If You Come Softly helped paved the way for a new generation of politically aware, best-selling YA books from authors like Angie Thomas and Tomi Adeyemi.I used to say I’d be a teacher or a lawyer or a hairdresser when I grew up but even as I said these things, I knew what made me happiest was writing. Woodson infuses their romance with the emotional urgency that defines her work and a prescient sense of social justice, zooming in on topics such as white privilege and police violence against Black youth. That is, until he finds love at first sight with a white, Jewish classmate named Ellie. Fifteen-year-old protagonist Jeremiah, a gifted Black boy from Brooklyn, feels painfully out of place as a new student at a posh Manhattan prep school. If You Come Softly, a Romeo-and-Juliet variation published in 1998 and set in New York City, is a particular highlight of her young-adult output. A 2020 MacArthur “Genius Grant” honoree with a National Book Award, five NAACP Image Awards and four Newbery Medals, she has spent the past three decades publishing celebrated literary fiction, poetry and, most famously, a wide variety of books for children and teens.
Jacqueline Woodson has had a remarkable career.
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