Friendship, Womanhood, and Support Theme Analysis

In Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson examines the importance of interpersonal connection, paying special attention to the way friendship helps August navigate the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Because August’s mother is dead and her father is preoccupied by his religion, she sorely lacks parental guidance. For this reason, August turns to Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi: forming a close bond with them helps not only take her mind off her grief, but August also feel less alone as she confronts the often unnerving experience of coming of age as a young woman in 1970s Brooklyn. She and her friends do their best to avoid the inappropriate sexual attention that older men give them as their bodies develop, relating to one another and sharing advice about how to steer clear of unwanted sexual encounters. And yet, there’s unfortunately only so much they can do as young women to stay safe, especially since the environment in which they grow up tacitly condones their premature sexualization by failing to properly address the fact that young and old men alike pressure, objectify, and even abuse them. In this regard, Another Brooklyn is also a study of the limits of friendship, effectively demonstrating that—though strong bonds between young women are deeply important—even the closest relationships can’t always make up for broader societal problems.

Woodson frames female friendship as deeply empowering and vital to August’s development. Perhaps the most important impact that August’s relationships with Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi have on her life is the uplifting effect their connection has on her overall outlook. Before becoming friends with them, August sits inside all day staring out the window and longing for a sense of connection. This is because her parents are largely uninvolved in her life: her mother is dead (or, according to August, living elsewhere) and her father is busy with work and his religion. Accordingly, joining Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi’s friend group gives August a sense of belonging. More importantly, though, her friendship with these girls gives her confidence as she moves into adolescence: for instance, when boys call out to August and her friends, they aren’t afraid to rebuff them without caring what they think. “The four of us together weren’t something they understood,” August notes. “They understood girls alone, folding their arms across their breasts, praying for invisibility.” This suggests that August might feel insecure if she faced these boys on her own, craving an “invisibility” that would help her escape their attention. With her friends, though, she feels emboldened and powerful, confident enough to simply walk away from boys she’s not interested in. In this way, female friendship emerges as a source of power and agency. 

In addition to lending the girls a sense of empowerment, their communal friendship affords them something even more practical: a support network of sorts. The older they get and the more their bodies develop, the more often they find themselves the subjects of unwanted sexual attention. Because of this, they give each other advice about which men to avoid, sharing their experiences so they can steer clear of dangerous, undesirable situations. For example, they tell each other to take somebody with them when they go to a certain shoe repair shop, where the proprietor tries to look up young girls’ dresses and offers them money to see their underwear. Similarly, Gigi warns her friends about joining their church choirs, telling them that her pastor often appears behind her while she’s singing and presses his penis against her back. With this in mind, readers see the practical value of companionship, as August tangibly benefits from her group of friends and the network they’ve formed—a network that almost makes up for her lack of parental guidance or protection.

Unfortunately, though, August and her friends aren’t always capable of protecting one another. This becomes painfully evident when a heroin addict living under Gigi’s stairwell rapes her, and though the girls urge her to carry razorblades so she can slash him the next time he comes near, what’s harrowingly obvious is that they live in an environment that does very little to keep women safe. To that end, Gigi admits that she can’t even tell her mother about what happened because she knows her mother will say it was her fault. This, in turn, is symptomatic of the larger problem facing the girls, which isn’t that they’re unable to protect each other, but that they would ever have to try to protect each other the first place. They live in a world that looks away when older men subject them to uncomfortable experiences, a world in which 12-year-old girls are blamed for their own rapes. In the absence of support from adults or society at large, then, August and her friends turn to one another, but this is an imperfect solution because friendship can only do so much to address a cultural lack of respect for women and their safety. Consequently, Another Brooklyn is a novel that simultaneously celebrates the empowering qualities of female friendship while also lamenting that these bonds are often the only resources available to women facing objectification and violence.