These prompts can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before or after reading the memoir in verse.

Personal Response Prompt

Woodson makes key connections between her homes in the south and New York and who she became. How is your home—in both the immediate familial sense and in the sense of your broader community—shaping you? What attitudes or ideas are prevalent in the places you call home, and what matters most to you about home?

Teaching Suggestion: Many students will probably see their home as typical or insignificant as a factor in their lives (especially if they live in suburban or rural areas). It may be helpful to point out aspects of their community that make it unique and think aloud with them about the connection between those features and the community. This prompt may help students with the theme of The Meaning of Home

Post-Reading Analysis

How is Brown Girl Dreaming itself a fulfillment of Woodson’s dream? How does the fact that Woodson longs to be a writer as a young woman influence the impact of the memoir on the reader?

Teaching Suggestion: Woodson’s journey in the memoir has a metatextual element in that she is consciously writing about becoming the person who could write Brown Girl Dreaming.