Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
Published 2016 · 192 pages · 22,755 words · about 2 hours at an average pace · literary fiction, coming-of-age, contemporary fiction, African American literature
How hard is Another Brooklyn to read?
Another Brooklyn scores 67 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 52 out of 100
- Another Brooklyn employs a contemporary and accessible vocabulary, avoiding archaic terms or invented language. However, it integrates specific cultural lexicon from 1970s Brooklyn and the Nation of Islam (e.g., 'hijab,' 'kufi,' 'jive talk'), alongside references to philosophical concepts and historical figures, elevating its demands slightly above purely straightforward fiction like The Great Gatsby.
- Sentence structure: 60 out of 100
- The novel features a lyrical prose style that balances moderate sentence lengths with occasional longer, flowing sentences, often connected by conjunctions or lists rather than deep nesting. While not reaching the extreme hypotaxis of Henry James or Faulkner, the narrative's rhythmic quality and frequent use of anaphora create a sophisticated yet navigable reading experience.
- Abstraction: 72 out of 100
- Jacqueline Woodson grounds the narrative in concrete experiences of girlhood, friendship, and loss in 1970s Brooklyn, but consistently elevates these events to philosophical reflections on memory, identity, and the nature of truth. The recurring motif 'This is memory' explicitly signals a meta-narrative layer, pushing the abstraction beyond social observation and closer to works like 2666 in its probing of meaning.
- Information density: 73 out of 100
- The novel is remarkably compressed, packing years of emotional, social, and historical information into a concise form, demanding high reader attention. Its non-linear structure, frequent time shifts, and reliance on lyrical implication rather than explicit exposition require active engagement to piece together the rich tapestry of events and character development, making it more dense than The Great Gatsby.
- Narrative indirection: 75 out of 100
- The narrative relies heavily on inference, presenting key events like the mother's mental decline and death, or Angela's mother's fate, through fragmented memories and suggestive imagery rather than explicit statements. Readers must actively piece together the timeline and emotional impact from August's retrospective, often poetic, observations.
- Symbolic density: 85 out of 100
- The novel is deeply imbued with symbolic meaning, where elements like water, the urn, the shattered window, and the concept of 'memory' itself carry profound significance beyond their literal presence. Brooklyn functions as a complex symbol of both confinement and community, while the girls' friendship is likened to a 'jazz improv,' suggesting an organic, evolving connection.
- Ironic distance: 48 out of 100
- The narrative maintains a reflective distance due to August's adult retrospection, but this distance is primarily one of poignant observation rather than sharp irony or satire. While August recounts the beliefs and experiences of her younger self and community, the text engages with these sincerely, focusing on the emotional truth and impact rather than creating a gap between what is said and what is implicitly critiqued.
- Resolution withholding: 70 out of 100
- The narrative deliberately withholds definitive emotional and factual closure, particularly concerning the mother's death and the ultimate fates of Gigi and Angela. August's adult reflections consistently revisit unresolved traumas and questions, emphasizing memory's fluid nature rather than offering neat resolutions to the past.
- Structural complexity: 65 out of 100
- The narrative employs a non-linear structure, frequently jumping between August's adult present and various points in her childhood and adolescence, often signaled by the recurring phrase 'This is memory.' While the point of view remains consistently first-person, the adult narrator's retrospective lens filters and interprets past events, adding a layer of subjective complexity to the fragmented chronology.
How Another Brooklyn is regarded
Another Brooklyn holds a literary regard score of 52 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.