"Brown Girl Dreaming" by Jacqueline Woodson

To be honest, poetry isn't the first genre I reach for. But, I find that the current state of global affairs makes me want to reach out beyond what I know and yearn to learn about people who aren't like me. I don't want to escape into fantasy, I want to know how other people lived/are living/handled/are handling life.

After several high profile recommendations (Thank you, Mrs. Obama), I selected the audio book version of Jacqueline Woodson's incredibly beautiful autobiography. I know, I know -- almost all of the positive reviews use the word 'beautiful.'

Because it is. It is beautiful and dreamy, evocative of particular places and times in her life. She captures the sudden and often mysterious ways in which a child's life changes with the language available to her at that age.

What made it a special treat for me is that the author narrates the audio book which means her inflection, pauses, and pronunciation cause the story to come to life much better in her voice than the voice in my head.