This novel focuses on a young mother’s desire to pursue more in life than motherhood, thereby giving readers an alternative look at the complexities of raising children. Of course, it’s also worth mentioning that the general area that Woodson focuses on is now undergoing yet another change in its population as many neighborhoods in New York City are experiencing gentrification.īecause Another Brooklyn examines what it means to grow up without a mother, it is similar to Jacqueline Woodson’s only other novel for adults, Red At The Bone. Although Woodson doesn’t spend much time in Another Brooklyn dwelling on this shift in Brooklyn’s population, the change serves as a backdrop for the novel, as August watches the last of her white neighbors packing up their cars and driving away to live elsewhere. One especially illustrative figure is that the Flatbush neighborhood was 89 percent white in 1970 and then only 30 percent white by the end of the decade, with African Americans making up as much as 50 percent of the population. For many years, Brooklyn was largely populated by white Irish and Italian immigrants, but this began to change in the 1960s and, even more notably, in the 1970s, as censuses began to show an increase in African American residents. During the 1970s, Brooklyn-and especially neighborhoods to the east of Prospect Park-underwent a significant population change.
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