Analysis Of Jacqueline Woodson's When A Southern Town Broke A Heart

Have you ever loved a place as a child, but as you got older you realized how sugar coated it really was? Well, that is how Jacqueline Woodson felt about her mother’s hometown and where she went every summer for vacation. The story, When A Southern Town Broke A Heart, starts off with the author feeling as if Greenville is her home. But one year when she has 9 she saw it as the racist place it really is. This causes her to feel betrayed, but also as if she isn't the naive little girl she once was. By observing this change, you can conclude that the theme she is trying to convey is that as you get older, you also get wiser. One example of the theme occurs when the author first introduces the story. “But the summer I was 9 years old, the town I had always loved morphed into a beautifully heartbreaking and complicated place.” (pg. 1). The author is saying that the year she turned nine, she found out something about her town that broke her heart and changed the way she saw it. This quote is important because it supports the theme. It shows that now she is older she has learned something about her town that made her wiser than when she was younger. She is now more informed because the new information changed her and caused her to begin to mature.

“But that summer the poison ivy found its way to my older’s legs, then along his hands and arms.” (pg. 4). This quote provides an example that her brother has had something very irritating occur to him over the summer. This is a metaphor for a racist experience that may have happened to him. I think this because when you are younger you have an immunity to poison ivy, but, as you grow older your immunity goes away. So, now her older brother is not immune anymore and this teaches her that just as his body is now affected by poison ivy, his mind is now affected by the poison of