The choice multicultural memoir we are reading is Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson. It is written in verse (like a poem), and tells the story of Woodson's life growing up black in both the North and South during the Civil Rights Movement (1960s and 70s). She was born in Ohio, and moved to South Carolina with her mother and siblings when she was young. Her mother then made the decision to move to New York, and they have been living there ever since.

During the course of the book, there is a subtly noted (but nevertheless important) emphasis on the power of words, which became a central idea in the book and Jacqueline's life. For example, when Jacqueline was young, she was fascinated with her first composition notebook and enjoyed writing poems. She liked when her sister read to her, losing herself in the stories and wishing she could write like that. In addition, the power of words showed in the way whites treated/talked to African-Americans and the way they spoke to and behaved toward whites during the Civil Rights Movement (examples could probably be easily found in The Color of Water as well).

Now for the outside research...From this news article by Huffington Post, a nice lesson-teaching flowchart that suggests how what people think of certain words makes them powerful in various ways:

Another news article, by the same site, also points out that words' power to define or harm somebody should not be denied.This is especially true when it comes to talking to and/or about people who differ from the speaker in some way or another, It is shown both ways --good and bad--in our memoir as well as others plus The Color of Water. To stand up for their beliefs peacefully, many turn to words. Take Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, so on and so forth. They wrote, spoke, sang, using words to express their opinions and thoughts and bring change. This links to Jacqueline Woodson's dream of becoming a writer who could change the world through words, which would later more or less come true.