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Jacqueline Woodson / Red at the Bone

September 26, 2019 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm PDT

Booksmith hosts the beloved New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming Jacqueline Woodsonfor her new novel, Red at the Bone. Please join us!

Two families from different social classes are joined together by an unexpected pregnancy and the child that it produces. Moving forward and backward in time, with the power of poetry and the emotional richness of a narrative ten times its length, Jacqueline Woodson’s extraordinary new novel uncovers the role that history and community have played in the experiences, decisions, and relationships of these families, and in the life of this child.

As the book opens in 2001, it is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody’s coming of age ceremony in her grandparents’ Brooklyn brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the soundtrack of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress. But the event is not without poignancy. Sixteen years earlier, that very dress was measured and sewn for a different wearer: Melody’s mother, for her own ceremony — a celebration that ultimately never took place.

Unfurling the history of Melody’s parents and grandparents to show how they all arrived at this moment, Woodson considers not just their ambitions and successes but also the costs, the tolls they’ve paid for striving to overcome expectations and escape the pull of history. As it explores sexual desire and identity, ambition, gentrification, education, class and status, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, Red at the Bone most strikingly looks at the ways in which young people must so often make long-lasting decisions about their lives — even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.


Jacqueline Woodson by Tiffany A. BloomfieldJacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and is the 2014 National Book Award Winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. In 2015, Woodson was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. Her recent adult book, Another Brooklyn, was a National Book Award finalist, and her new adult book, Red at the Bone, is coming in September 2019. She is the author of more than two dozen award-winning books for young adults, middle graders and children; among her many accolades, she is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a four-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include The Other SideEach Kindness, Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon; Newbery Honor winners FeathersShow Way, and After Tupac and D Foster; and Miracle’s Boys, which received the LA Times Book Prize and the Coretta Scott King Award. Jacqueline is also the recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature and the winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. Author photo by Tiffany A. Bloomfield.


This event is free and all ages.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Red at the Bone, order below and put your request in the comments field; for any of Jacqueline’s other books, order here and be sure to do the same.

Details

Date:
September 26, 2019
Time:
7:30 pm - 9:30 pm PDT
Event Categories:
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https://www.booksmith.com/event/booksmith-jacqueline-woodson-red-bone

Organizer

The Booksmith
Phone:
415-863-8688
View Organizer Website

Venue

The Booksmith
1644 Haight St
San Francisco , CA 94117 United States
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Phone:
415-863-8688
View Venue Website