Name:

Liz Leighton

Working Thesis:
Jacqueline Woodson’s Brown Girl Dreaming is a queer novel in both form and content.

Body Paragraph:

In the essay “What are Gender Criticism and Queer Theory”, the questions “If there is

such thing as reading like a woman and such a thing as reading like a man, how then do lesbians

read? Are there gay and lesbian ways of reading?” (Smith 386) are raised and shortly answered,

“Many would say that there are.” (Smith 386) The questions brought up immediately validate the

thought that gay and lesbian (and though and stated, other queer readers) readers are coming at

the text from the lens that is inaccessible to their straight counterpart. The experience of the

queer reader is an experience the straight reader will never have, and the two groups will view

the texts in inherently different ways because of their social situations. As a lesbian myself, I

wholeheartedly agree with the concept that lesbians—and other queer people—read works from

a lens fundamentally different from their non-queer counterparts. Being queer is being relegated

to being an outsider, and can lead to potential feelings of disconnect from works that may feel

unreliable to the queer reader. The feelings of otherness and being an outsider is prevalent

throughout the novel, in Jacqueline’s feelings towards the places she’s lived, her religion, and

how she is brought up. This otherness is a contributing factor to the novel’s queer content.

Otherness comes from a feeling of disconnect from the social norm, and an exploration of the

otherness one feels can surface in how a person views content.

 The poem “the right way to speak” in Brown Girl Dreaming tells us the story of

Jacqueline’s mother enforcing proper grammar in her home because “You are from the North,

our mother says. / You know the right way to speak” (Woodson 69). Jacqueline’s mother’s

actions help fuel a feeling of isolation her children feel thought the novel. The isolation

Jacqueline and her siblings feel are akin to the isolation a queer reader may feel. Jacqueline also

feels disconnected from those around her due to her religion, as explored in the poems “flag”

(Woodson 162-163) and “because we’re witnesses” (Woodson 164). She discusses her feelings

of walking through the motions of her religion, not feeling truly a part of her religion while also

not feeling a part of those who are not her religion. I feel that reading as a lesbian, along with the

knowledge that the author is a queer woman, helps inform the reader that Woodson is writing

from a queer perspective, and the isolation and social disconnect she feels helps fuel the idea that

the novel is queer itself.

MLA Works Cited:

Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Johanna M. Smith. Frankenstein: Complete, Authoritative
Text with Biographical, Historical, and Cultural Contexts, Critical History, and Essays
from Contemporary Critical Perspectives. Bedford/St. Martins, 2016.
Woodson, Jacqueline. Brown Girl Dreaming. Puffin, 2020.