Welcome to the Velshi Band Book Club.

I'm Ali Velshi.

How can you capture the wild fleeting feelings of first love in a few lines?

How can you explain the hollow pain of death with a few words?

How can you walk through the searing frustration of a community that won't accept you on a single page?

True poetry.

From nursery rhymes as children to Shakespeare in high school to your favorite Taylor Swift album, poetry is all around us.

It's part of our world and our life in ways we might not

even notice or appreciate unless we're looking. And today, we're going to look. This meeting

of the Valshia Band Book Club will explore the power of verse through one critically acclaimed

and hugely important book of poems. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.

Let's get started.

Quote, the revolution is always going to be happening.

I want to write this down.

That revolution is like a merry-go-round.

History always being made somewhere. And maybe for a short time,

we're part of that history. And then the ride stops, and our turn is over. We walk slowly toward

the park, where I can already see the big swings empty and waiting for me. And after I write it down, maybe I'll end this way.

My name is Jacqueline Woodson, and I am ready for the ride.

End quote.

Told through lyrical poems and haikus that heavily incorporate blank space and specific line breaks,

Brown Girl Dreaming is a memoir, chronicling Jacqueline Woodson's very real childhood in the late 60s and 70s.

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