Many of Jacqueline Woodson's books tackle serious issues in a way that's accessible for kids: Race, drugs, foster care, classism, intolerance.
Her latest book does that, too. It's called Before the Ever After and it's written in the voice of a 12-year-old boy whose father is a professional football player, a big star both on TV and to the neighborhood kids. But his father is also suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the degenerative brain disease that's been diagnosed in many collision-sport athletes.
Before the Ever After documents his father's decline. But first we get to know his dad. How he loves playing football. How he loves his family. And how when his son and a group of his young friends pile laughingly on his back, he shakes them off "like feathers."
That's Jacqueline Woodson's lovely writing. I asked how that description came to her.
"A lot of times it's really visual for me as I'm writing it," she says. "What would it look like to have these little boys climbing on this dad and they think they're, quote unquote, tackling him and he just rises up and shakes them off, you know? Does he shake them off like marbles? Does he shake them off, you know, like stones? It's like no, he shakes them off like feathers cause they're really not tackling him at all. And it is about, for me, just rewriting and rereading and listening to how it sounds out loud to get to the images that are in my head. And it's almost like I'm trying to draw the picture with the words — the pictures that I see in my head, I can't draw, but I can do it with words."
Interview Highlights
On reworking and playing with words
And getting rid of them. I think, you know, trying to get to the essence of what I'm trying to say without overwriting — it's so easy to add a bunch of adjectives, or say it: he's 223 pounds, he's this tall, you know, he has these broad shoulders. And for me, that doesn't paint an image that's going to eventually lead to having deep empathy for this person. You want to see him becoming as the narrative progresses.
On whether she meant the book's fragmented style to reflect the effects of CTE
I did. I did. And also the urgency of it. So it's kind of like these small moments of what he has, right? Because he doesn't have this long, looping narrative anymore. He has these small moments of clarity where his father has clarity, these small moments when it's his dad's good day, these small moments of memory. And I really wanted the book, the shape of the book, to represent what was happening in his life.
On choosing this topic for a kids' book
I think one of the things I'm always concerned with as a writer is telling the truth. And I think a lot of times people don't tell the truth about about the trauma that contact sports can play on the body. We see the glory, we see the hailing of it. And now, of course, we see the politics of it, but we don't see the damage that families sometimes experience, the damage that, you know, sons of dads experience, and dads themselves.
I want them to know the beauty of the sport ... And I want them to know the damaging impact of the sport.
And for me, challenge has always been, how do I tell a story for young people and tell it with love, right, and tell it with empathy and tell it in a way that's not going to break them. And finding that balance is always kind of the challenge I want. But at the end of the day, it's like, what do I care about as a writer? What stories do I want to tell? And I really wanted to tell the story of CTE and the impact it has on everyday people.
On whether the book is advising kids to stay away from football
It's a fine line when you're a writer, right? Of course, people who write young people's literature are subversive in some way. We are writing the narrative. And at the same time a book can't be didactic. Because you lose the reader right away.
So I never say I write to teach or to give advice, but I think in the case of Before the Ever After, I want young people to have the whole story, you know, I want them to know the beauty of the sport. It is a beautiful sport. I want them to know the history of the sport, that it actually started with a pigskin bladder. And I want them to know the damaging impact of the sport. So it isn't me just trying to say this one-sided thing, don't play football. I want to say, know what this means.
This story was produced for radio by Andrea Hsu, edited by Justine Kenin and adapted for the Web by Petra Mayer.
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