"Girl, Put Your (Funky) Records On"

Category B, Prompt D

For this passage, I chose the song, “Girl Put Your Records On” by Corinne Bailey Rae. I love this song because it is upbeat and nostalgic, as Jacqueline Woodson views much of her childhood in Brown Girl Dreaming. She definitely had many struggles, but in her author's note after the book she says that she wouldn’t trade it and knew that she was “very loved.”

The nostalgic element of the song is very prevalent as it is told in past tense, perhaps looking back on Rae’s own childhood. It says “Summer came like cinnamon, so sweet/Little girls double-dutch on the concrete.” This created an imagery for me of Jacqueline learning to double-dutch in the streets of Brooklyn.

The chorus of the song reminds me particularly of the passage when Jacqueline would sneak over to her “forever friend” Maria’s place to listen to funk music. Here, they would finally get to listen to their “favorite song(s)” dance the funky chicken, and say the word “funk” until they burst into laughter because it had lost its meaning.

Rae’s discussion of hair also finds connections with the novel. The chorus says “go ahead let your hair down,” which reminded me of Jacqueline longing to leave her grandmother’s ribbons, and childhood, behind. “Gotta love that afro hairdo” also reminds me of when Jacqueline later wants an afro since all of her celebrity role models wear one. Her mother tells her she cannot, but decides to wear one herself.

The song finishes with “you’re gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow.” This relates to Brown Girl Dreaming as a coming of age novel. Jacqueline wants to find her place in the world, as she is liminally stuck between the South and the North, country and city, black and white, Black Power and Nonviolence, Jehovah's Witness and Muslim influence. However, Jacqueline is able to make space for all of these things in her worldview in the end of the novel, and hopes to make her way and find her place as a writer.