SuitabookThe house you pass on the way
Jacqueline Woodson
- Reading
- Read alongside conversation about belonging and family stories, pausing if the bombing or Staggerlee’s feelings become difficult. Keep the ending open for discussion, since her eventual choices and relationships are not established.
- Themes
- Belonging and difference: Staggerlee has adopted a fiercer name and feels set apart by family history, family withdrawal and her own experiences. The situation clearly centres on difference and separation, but whether the story affirms, challenges or resolves Staggerlee’s self-understanding is unknown.
- Family history and prejudice: Staggerlee’s grandparents died in an anti-civil-rights bombing, while her parents’ interracial marriage forms part of her family context. The history is presented as significant to Staggerlee’s experience, but the book’s broader treatment of prejudice, memory and family response cannot be determined.
- Growing feelings and possible futures: Staggerlee feels confused longing for Hazel, and cousin Trout gives her a first glimpse of possible future selves and life beyond childhood. The story appears to connect relationships with growing self-awareness, but it is not clear whether feelings are reciprocated or what future Staggerlee imagines.
- Worth knowing
- The book may merit attention where a reader is affected by bereavement, racist violence, family withdrawal, or uncertainty about feelings towards a friend.