Autobiography of a Family Photo
by Jacqueline Woodson
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Description
A black girl's difficult growing up in New York. The family comprises an alcoholic father, a promiscuous mother, a brother who is a homosexual, a second brother who abuses women and a third who is illegitimate and has blue eyes. The saving grace is an idealistic sister. By the author of I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This.Tags
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Member Recommendations
susanbooks Autobiography of a Familly Photo is a prose novel and stands beautifully on its own. Read alongside Brown Girl Dreaming, the earlier book seems like the nightmare, R-rated version of the later one. Both are stunning.
Member Reviews
Jacqueline Woodson's novel is a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story. She tells her tale in short chapters, each representing a photograph that triggers the narrator to relate what was happening at that point in time: her older, effeminate brother Troy leaving home to fight in Vietnam; falling in love for the very first time with a neighbor girl; the birth of her younger brother who is half white, half black. With each successive photo, she begins to reveal the slow disintegration of her family and how, instead of allowing those pitfalls to stand in her way, she stubbornly presses on, questioning the way the world works and discovering her own identity as a brave young teenager.
I enjoyed the book, it's jus that sometimes it sounded like poetry.
kinda depressing but amazing writing
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Publishing Triangle 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Novels
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Author Information

53+ Works 36,784 Members
Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio on February 12, 1963. She received a B.A. in English from Adelphi University in 1985. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a drama therapist for runaways and homeless children in New York City. Her books include The House You Pass on the Way, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, Lena, and The show more Day You Begin. She won the Coretta Scott King Award in 2001 for Miracle's Boys. After Tupac and D Foster, Feathers, and Show Way won Newbery Honors. Brown Girl Dreaming won the E. B. White Read-Aloud Award in 2015. Her other awards include the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. She was also selected as the Young People's Poet Laureate in 2015 by the Poetry Foundation. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Notable Lists
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Autobiography of a Family Photo
- Epigraph
- 'Dark phrases of womanhood
of never havin been a girl
half-notes scattered
without rhythm/no tune
distraught laughter fallin
over a black girl's shoulder
it's funny/it's hysterical
the melody-less-ness of... (show all) her dance
- Ntozake Shange - Dedication
- For Anna Grace and for the people I love who know who they are
- First words
- I died once.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)As if I'm walking right off of somebody's dumb, otherwise blank page.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, LGBTQ+, General Fiction, Young Adult
- DDC/MDS
- 813.54 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American fiction in English 1900-1999 1945-1999
- LCC
- PS3573 .O64524 .A94 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 1961-
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 95
- Popularity
- 337,647
- Reviews
- 3
- Rating
- (4.08)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3






















































