After Tupac and D Foster

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of race, racism, racial identity, anti-gay bias, gun violence and fatalities, wrongful conviction/imprisonment, and the foster system.

Jacqueline Woodson has been writing books in the children’s, middle grade, young adult, and adult categories for nearly 35 years. Throughout her long and prolific career, she has garnered widespread recognition and awards for her books in each one of these categories, but she has also been the target of censorship.

Woodson’s novels often explore themes of Black identity, gender, and the inherent challenges of growing up Black in the United States. She has been recognized as a voice of her generation because her work speaks to the experiences and feelings shared by so many people. Woodson was named the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation in 2015 and the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature by the Library of Congress in 2018. She has also received multiple Coretta Scott King, Newbery, and Jane Addams awards, all of which recognize excellence in specific areas of children’s literature. In 2015, she won both the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Work in Literature after the publication of Brown Girl Dreaming, a novel-in-verse. In 2020, Woodson received the prestigious MacArthur Grant, which is a large sum of money that innovative artists and scholars can use to support their work.

The strength of Woodson’s stories lies in her poetic rendering of real and often harsh scenarios. There are examples of this in After Tupac and D Foster in the way that Woodson recognizes the significance of Tupac as an icon and symbol for Black adolescents. However, gaining so much attention for one’s work often results in receiving criticism as well. Because the themes and topics of many of Woodson’s books explore challenging situations such as racism, child abuse, teenage pregnancy, interracial relationships, economic disparity, and anti-gay bias, at least six of Woodson’s books have been challenged or banned in libraries and schools throughout the United States. Even Brown Girl Dreaming, which won some of the most prestigious awards for children’s literature, was challenged in 2021 because some believed it promoted Critical Race Theory.

In an October 2023 interview with Gothamist, Woodson shared her thoughts on the censorship of her books as well as other books depicting authentic experiences of Black, brown, and Indigenous children:

You see the struggle that young kids face again and again, and with the erasure of these narratives I think we’re going to see more and more of that. That’s what scares me. The isolation and the way that Black and brown and Indigenous kids are not going to see themselves in the narrative. And I think it’s very intentional (Fondren, Precious. “Jacqueline Woodson on Bushwick, Her New Novel and Having Her Books Banned.” Gothamist, 15 Oct. 2023).

Woodson continues to write stories that represent voices from Black, queer, and other marginalized communities so that readers who share those identities will see themselves reflected in literature, while readers who don’t will gain perspective and empathy for people who are different than them.