Show Way

by Jacqueline Woodson

Show Way is a story about ancestry. The author is telling a story about her ancestors to her daughter. She tells her about their past and how they all had their own "Show Way." Every piece of quilt starting from Soonie's great grandmother had a significant meaning. When Soonie's great-grandmother made the quilts, the pieces signified roads, moons, and stars to follow, a way to escape their slavery. Soonie's grandmother was sold into slavery, and she made clothes for everyone in the big house, even for slaves. At night she sewed stars, and moons, and roads into quilts, each piece a picture signifying what to follow to find the north star; her own show way. Mathis Soonie's grandmother married a slave, who died before meeting his baby girl, a girl-child born free in 1863. Years later—Soonie came. Soonie and her mother grew up on a land where they’d pick cotton and got paid little and a piece of ground to farm on. They called this land home and they shared this land with other free people. On this land they worked hard, from pink day to blue-black nights, but it was a free life nevertheless; at the end of the day they could find a thing or two to smile about. Soonie made patch pieces with stars and moons and roads; sewed fields and rivers and trees. She patched these pieces together so her mother could sell them come market day. She called her creation "Trail to the North" she also called them "Show Way." They no longer needed the secret trial to the north, but rather they lived well off of the money those quilts brought in, her own show way. She married a man named Walter Scott who owned land in [[Anderson, South Carolina]]; she had a baby and named her Georgiana. Georgiana was born a reader, and they said about her that she always had a book in her hand; she grew up to teach a small school in Anderson. She had two daughters named Caroline and Ann, these two girls walked in a line to change the laws that kept black and white people living separate. They sometimes were scared but regained their confidence when they saw the show way patches that their grandmother Soonie had pinned inside their dresses. Ann grew up to be a poet, which sometimes she converted to song, and Caroline stitched those songs into art for people to buy and hang up on their walls. Ann Had The Author, Jacqueline Woodson, who grew up to read and write, but when she could not write she was sew stars and moons and roads because her mother told her that everything that happened before Jacqueline was born was her own kind of show way. She grew up to read and write, and her writing turned into books where she told stories of other people's show ways. A story which she enjoys repeating to her daughter.