Loss, Denial, and Grief Theme Analysis

Jacqueline Woodson’s novel Another Brooklyn studies how people cope with loss. The narrator, August, focuses on her lifelong attempt to come to terms with her mother’s death, which she refuses to acknowledge throughout her childhood and adolescence. Instead of accepting that her mother committed suicide, she convinces herself that she’s still alive and will one day come to live with the family in Brooklyn. As August remains steadfast in this belief, though, she experiences other kinds of loss that are impossible to deny. For instance, she loses Sylvia, one of her closest friends, after discovering that Sylvia and Jerome—August’s ex-boyfriend—have been seeing each other behind August’s back. In response, August severs all ties with Sylvia, destabilizing one of the only consistent and emotionally-fulfilling things in her life: her friend group. Later, August’s other friend Angela disappears in the aftermath of her own mother’s death, and it isn’t long after this that August’s friend Gigi commits suicide. On top of all of this interpersonal loss, August continues to mourn the loss of her childhood home, since her father took her away from the family’s beautiful ranch in Tennessee when she was only eight years old, bringing her and her brother to live in Brooklyn. At the end of the novel, though, August returns to Tennessee to find that her old home has been torn down, the land reclaimed by the government. It isn’t until she faces the undeniable loss of her old home that she finally manages to admit that her mother is dead. In turn, Woodson implies that facing reality and accepting loss are integral to the mourning process and that it’s often impossible to remain in denial forever.

August’s unwillingness to accept her mother’s death emerges early in the novel, when she recounts telling her brother that their mother will someday come to Brooklyn to live with them. As the book proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear not only that their mother is dead, but also that August knows this on some level. For instance, in a conversation about a jar that contains her mother’s ashes, August innocently asks her father what’s inside it. “You know what’s in the jar,” he replies, and when she says she knows there are ashes inside but doesn’t know whose, he says, “You know whose.” This conversation suggests that August is actively keeping herself from coming to terms with the fact that her mother is dead. When her father implies that August knows exactly whose ashes are in the jar, it becomes clear that he isn’t keeping the truth from her. Rather, she’s hiding the truth from herself, trying to protect herself from the harsh reality that her mother committed suicide. And despite August’s vague knowledge of this, she insists to her brother that their mother is “coming soon,” saying she’ll arrive “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”—a phrase which ignores the fact that their mother is dead while also implying that she won’t actually arrive the next day, nor the next, nor the one after that. In this way, August manages to deny reality while also subtly acknowledging it.

While trying to sustain her denial of her mother’s death, August commits herself to her relationships with Sylvia, Angela, and Gigi. For a time, her friendship with these girls enables her to continue avoiding the reality of her mother’s death. However, there comes a point when loss permeates August’s friend group, as she catches Sylvia kissing her ex-boyfriend Jerome and consequently cuts her out of her life. This also happens around the time that Angela’s own mother dies and Angela disappears into the foster care system. To make matters worse, Gigi soon commits suicide after none of her friends come see her perform in a musical. Her suicide is clearly tied to the fact that she has lost the previously unwavering support of her friend group, thereby suggesting that loss (whether a loved one’s death or the end of a friendship) can sometimes perpetuate itself in devastating ways. More importantly, though, Gigi’s death emphasizes the extent to which August cannot escape grief, ultimately making it that much harder to avoid recognizing that her mother—like Gigi—committed suicide.

On a certain level, August has always known that her mother killed herself by wading into the water on what was once their family land in Tennessee. But it isn’t until she visits the land with her father and brother and sees that very body of water that she’s capable of actually admitting this to herself. In the same way that everything else in August’s life has been pervaded by loss and mourning, SweetGrove—the family’s property—has been reclaimed by the government by the time August returns as a teenager. In fact, even the house itself has been torn down, effectively erasing the landscape of August’s childhood. But facing this embodiment of loss has an important effect on August, allowing her to finally recognize that her mother is never coming back. This stripping back of denial, Woodson intimates, is part of what it means to grow up. “When you’re fifteen, you can’t make promises of a return to the before place,” August contemplates at one point. “Your aging eyes tell a different, truer story.” It is with these “aging eyes” that she looks upon a place she used to call home and allows herself to embrace reality even though that reality is painful. In this way, then, Woodson suggests that although denial is a common response to loss, it becomes harder and harder for people to practice as they get older and see that self-imposed ignorance is an ineffective coping mechanism.