A Space For Expression and Introspection
A Space To Be Determined.
A Space To Be Determined.
Another Brooklyn, the novel by Jacqueline Woodson, mentions early on this idea of jazz being this force that wasn’t available to August and her friends during their childhoods in Brooklyn. An interesting preposition given Jazz’s unique importance to the African-American experience as a whole. A bit further in the novel, August describes herself and her friends as a sort of jazz improv group. Jazz is a form of music that I very much enjoy myself, mainly because of how broad it can be. Woodson seems to be painting August, Gigi, Sylvia, and Angela with brush strokes laced in jazz flare. Their quartet features a myriad of varying personalities that combine to form a shared experience of “growing up girl in Brooklyn” (pg. 3). Jazz provides its practitioners the opportunity to convey emotions through the music, through the beat of your drum, through the notes of your saxophone, etc. Jazz is very cathartic, as this novel could’ve been for Woodson, even if its not autobiographical. The chaotic nature of jazz is mirrored by the even more chaotic lives of the four girls mentioned here. Angela is repressing knowledge of her mother’s existence from her friends, August is grappling with not having a mother around to love her, Gigi is trying to keep the four together, and Sylvia is under the iron fist of an abusive father. Chaos surrounds these girls on a daily basis, same as the people who frequeted jazz bars back in the ‘20s. However, when these girls are together against their individual pain they create a force not known by many around them. This unity creates a shared bond that strengthens them in their plight, they each give the other something to root for amongst the chaos. The same as jazz does to this very day. Their bond is a jazz improv group, and that bond was a force to be reckoned with. Which is why it was sad that that bond was shattered under the micro-pressures of society at large. Together they were unstoppable because they had each other.
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Trey BrownA creative-writing major at Wright State with a particular interest in motion pictures. Archives
April 2019
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