Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Brown Girl Dreaming is a hybrid form, using aspects of both poetry and memoir. What are the key elements of each of these genres, and how do you expect them to work in this book?

Teaching Suggestion: As a hybrid work, Woodson’s memoir provides fertile ground to discuss how genre and form help inform the thematic meaning of a text. Getting students to think about what imperatives each genre has will prepare them to engage with the work, particularly as it uses poetry to present discrete memories.

• Memoir – SuperSummary’s page breaks down the genre’s elements and key features.
• Understanding Poetry is More Straightforward Than You Think by Matthew Zapruder – Zapruder’s essay will help prepare students for Woodson’s plainspoken poetic style and may help demystify poetry as a genre.

2. Woodson was born in 1963, which means her childhood aligned closely with the civil rights era. What do you know about the struggle for equality in the American South (and throughout America) in the 1960s? What do you know about figures like Martin Luther King, Jr.