39 pages 1 hour read

Jacqueline Woodson

Another Brooklyn

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Important Quotes

Quotation Mark Icon

“For a long time, my mother wasn’t dead yet. Mine could have been a more tragic story.” 


(Chapter 1, Page 1)

In the opening lines of the book, August creates uncertainty around her mother’s death. She acknowledges that her mother, at some point, died—but the assertion that she “wasn’t dead yet” goes unexplained for most of the book. Eventually, it is clear that this line has a hidden meaning. For a long time, August didn’t believe her mother was dead, and thus did not experience her as being dead (yet). 

Quotation Mark Icon

“I had been home for a month watching my father die. Death didn’t frighten me. Not now. Not anymore. But Brooklyn felt like a stone in my throat.” 


(Chapter 1, Page 9)

August compares the difficulty of mourning her father with the difficulty of coping with her past in Brooklyn. As an anthropologist studying death, she feels prepared for her father’s passing. However, back in Brooklyn, she is haunted by the less-certain end to some of her friendships, as well as the imprint that time in her life made on her. She will wrestle with this in the pages to come.

Quotation Mark Icon

“Sylvia, Angela, Gigi, and August. We were four girls together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone.” 


(Chapter 1, Page 16)

August stresses the paradoxes in her friendships. The girls are at once together and alone; it is their shared sense of loneliness that binds them together. Neither that togetherness nor their beauty can protect them from the loneliness inherent in their difficult family situations.

Related Titles

By Jacqueline Woodson

Study Guide

logo

After Tupac and D Foster

Jacqueline Woodson

After Tupac and D Foster

Jacqueline Woodson

Study Guide

logo

If You Come Softly

Jacqueline Woodson

If You Come Softly

Jacqueline Woodson

Study Guide

logo

Locomotion

Jacqueline Woodson

Locomotion

Jacqueline Woodson

Study Guide

logo

Miracle's Boys

Jacqueline Woodson

Miracle's Boys

Jacqueline Woodson

Study Guide

logo

Red at the Bone

Jacqueline Woodson

Red at the Bone

Jacqueline Woodson

Plot Summary

logo

The House You Pass on the Way

Jacqueline Woodson

The House You Pass on the Way

Jacqueline Woodson