We can look back
to past memories to determine how we arrived to the present. Jacqueline Woodson
catalogues her youth and draws from her memories to express who she is now. She
writes episodically. Each episode teaches a new lesson, reveals a new value, or
identifies a new struggle for her growing up. Although the scenes seem
disjoint, she wraps them together to evince who she has become and will become
in the future. Woodson links memories and different stages of life together as
she explains “each day a new world opens itself up to you. And all the worlds
you are…gather into one world called You” (319-320).
Woodson
recalls her past as one whole. She does not see each stage in her life as
disconnected because they all lead up to making her who she is today and who
she will become one day. A person’s individual life span is a constant
continuum. You cannot remove pieces from your timeline without changing who you
are today. Even if she cannot remember the memories from before and during her childhood,
she had her “Aunt Ada Adams, who is a genealogist and [her] family historian.
She was the go to person and filled in so many gaps in [her] memory” (323-324).
Woodson uses a lot of the book to describe her family history before her birth.
However, she suggests that she is already present in the story even before she
is born. She explicates that if you “look closely. There I am in the furrow of
Jack’s brow, in the slyness of Alicia’s smile, in the bend of Grace’s hand…There
I am…Beginning” (12). Although she is not in existence yet, the people who will
influence her personality, nuances, and life are already alive. Therefore, bits
and pieces of her are already formed before her birth. Similarly, she carries
on the memory of her grandpa after his death. Her grandma recognizes and tells
Jacqueline “you’ve got your daddy’s easy way…I watch you with your friends and
see him all over again” (288). In a way, her grandfather lives on through her.
He greatly impacted her life and influenced her formative years, so that those
with a keen eye can recall his tendencies and see them persisting in her.
Essentially,
Woodson uses inductive reasoning to conclude that we are the makers of
ourselves. “You decide what each world and each story and each ending will
finally be” (320). Ultimately, we are all writers; we write and determine what
our own story will be in the end. While we cannot alter the past, or break the
timeline continuum, we can choose how to look back on our memories. We
interpret our own memories and history so that we can create and tell our own story.
As she displays with her observation of people living or existing through other
people, she suggests that we cannot pinpoint when we begin and end exactly. We
cannot isolate a single part of our lives from the rest. Each stage is linked
together and irreversible, but we can decide what the final whole of our story
means. We get to interpret our memories and determine what the take away
message is from each.
By
writing episodically, Woodson expresses time on a linear timeline. The stages
of her life are sequential, yet they also fold into each other. She stores words,
lessons, and values away in her memory that she draws upon later in life.
Subsequently, each day is no longer a singular event in time; rather, the
memories seep into a later day when she remembers them. She draws connections
between the past, present, and future with her memories. Her passing thoughts
and wishes build upon each other to turn into larger dreams and hopes for the
future. The order of the stages of her life matter; however, they cannot be
separated because they combine to develop who she is now. Together as a whole sequence,
they make up her beliefs and person. The Jacqueline of Ohio, Greenville, and
Brooklyn are not three separate people, rather they conjoin to make one whole
and dynamic person.
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