If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson

First published: 1998

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Domestic realism

Time of work: Early twenty-first century

Locale: New York and Brooklyn, New York

Principal Characters:

• Elisha (Ellie) Eisen, a Jewish girl who recently transferred from her public high school to Manhattan’s prestigious Percy Academy
• Jeremiah (Miah) Roselind, a fifteen-year-old Brooklyn native and basketball star, who is the son of a famous filmmaker and a well-known writer and one of the few black students attending Percy Academy
• Marion Eisen, Ellie’s mother, who twice abandoned the family when Ellie was young only to return weeks later each time
• Nelia Roselind, Miah’s mother and the author of three successful novels, who is currently separated from Miah’s father
• Carlton, Miah’s best friend, who attends public high school and is the son of an interracial couple
• Nelson Roselind, Miah’s father and a famous filmmaker, who lives with his girlfriend across the street from Miah and Nelia
• Edward Eisen, Ellie’s father, who is a physician and is rarely available to his wife and family

The Novel

If You Come Softly is a love story. The novel tells of two young people, Miah and Ellie, who fall in love unexpectedly and are preparing themselves to accept all that their love will mean to them and to the world, when their moment of possibility is tragically stolen. Ellie is the novel’s first-person narrator, while Miah’s third-person voice offers his perspective in equal measure.

Miah and Ellie meet at Percy Academy, where both are new transfer students. Miah, an African American basketball player from Brooklyn, wears his hair in dreadlocks and is skeptical about attending a school with so many white students. Ellie drops her books in the hallway, and Miah helps her pick them up. Curiosity sparks between them, and they think about each other constantly as they return to their regular lives.

Ellie lives with her parents in a wealthy neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She has four much older siblings scattered around the country. When Ellie was young, her mother twice abandoned the family, so Ellie still feels anger and mistrust toward her mother, calling her by her first name. After meeting Miah, she wonders what her family will think about her interest in dating an African American student. When she floats the idea in a phone call to her sister, Anne, Anne’s response is not enthusiastic. Ellie becomes nervous about telling her parents about Miah. For the rest of the novel, she struggles with figuring out when and how to tell them.

Miah is equally intrigued by Ellie, and he wonders how meeting her will affect his transition into a majority white school. He does not mention her to his parents at first, but he talks about her with his biracial friend, Carlton. At home, Miah struggles to accept his parents’ separation, which is particularly pronounced because they live across the street from each other and Miah shuttles back and forth between the two households. Miah’s father is a famous filmmaker and his mother a successful writer, and Miah keeps these facts secret from Ellie and others at his new school. He wants to appear to be just another “brother” from Brooklyn, but he fears that by this omission he is not being true to himself.

Soon enough, Miah and Ellie meet again in class. They are drawn to each other, despite their nervousness about entering into an interracial relationship. They proceed with caution, noticing that their classmates and teachers watch them when they are together, and when they go out together they even get looks from strangers. Miah introduces Ellie to his mother, who welcomes her into their home. Ellie stalls about taking Miah home but ultimately decides she is ready to tell her parents. Ellie tells Miah that she will introduce him the next day, and they part at dusk, each feeling elated about their future. Miah takes his basketball into Central Park, where he runs and dribbles, losing himself in his happy, romantic thoughts. He does not hear the shouts of the police behind him, searching for a black crime suspect. Because he does not hear them, he does not stop running. He is shot and killed. Devastated, Ellie looks for comfort in knowing she had chosen to spend the time she could with Miah.

The Characters

Miah and Ellie are two young characters who must come to terms with their unexpected love for each other. Most of the novel’s plot conflicts are internal, as the two characters struggle with the perception that the people in their lives will react badly to their relationship. To readers, it is not certain that this negative reaction will ever actually occur, and when Miah and Ellie do give each other a chance, it seems their families and acquaintances are not upset with their choice, but simply curious. The book is about Miah and Ellie getting ready to face the challenges of interracial dating, but their chance is taken away before they ever have to face any significant opposition to their love.

At the same time, Miah and Ellie each struggle with family issues. Miah’s parents are separated, which places a great strain upon him. He loves them, but he does not want to be defined by their successes and failures, so it is a difficult choice for him to admit to Ellie who his parents are. Ellie is still coming to terms with her mother’s abandonment, which has left her mistrustful of the people who should always be there for her: her parents. She finds in Miah a good confidant for her concerns. The home lives of the two teens inform their relationship experience, as Miah must overcome his fears about being black in a white world and Ellie must overcome her trust issues and her reluctance to be different from her peers by dating an African American.

Critical Context

If You Come Softly was inspired by Lorde’s poem. Woodson handles the familiar subject matter of race relations by exploring a unique situation and delving deeply into the minds and hearts of her main characters. Woodson describes the book as a modern Romeo and Juliet story, in which the lovers’ enemies are not within their families but within society at large: racial profiling, police brutality, ignorance, and racism. If You Come Softly received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. The book continues to be embraced by teachers and librarians as a good selection for young readers, as evidenced by its classification as an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book.

Bibliography

Bishop, Rudine Simms. Free Within Ourselves: The Development of African American Children’s Literature. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2007. History and analysis of the evolution of African American writing for children and young adults; begins with the oral culture of slave narratives and moves through the twentieth century to ultimately discuss contemporary African American writers for young audiences, including Jacqueline Woodson.

Lorde, Audre. The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde, New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. This complete collection of Audre Lorde’s poetry, including rare early works, contains the full text of the poem “If You Come Softly,” which inspired Woodson’s novel.

Sullivan, Ed. “Race Matters.” School Library Journal, June 1, 2002. Discusses young adult books that deal with race issues, including interracial dating; covers If You Come Softly.

Woodson, Jacqueline. “Jacqueline Woodson: This Year’s Edwards Award-Winner Takes on Life’s Toughest Challenges—Poverty, Prejudice, Love and Loss.” Interview by Deborah Taylor. School Library Journal, June 1, 2006. Article and interview featuring Jacqueline Woodson upon her receipt of the Margaret A. Edwards Award honoring lifetime achievement in writing literature for young adults. Includes discussion of reader reaction to If You Come Softly.