Gwendolyn BrooksJoin now to read essay Gwendolyn BrooksGwendolyn Brooks was a highly regarded, much-honored poet, with the distinction of being the first black author to win the Pulitzer Prize. She also was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress–the first black woman to hold that position–and poet laureate of the State of Illinois. Many of Brookss works display a political consciousness, especially those from the 1960s and later, with several of her poems reflecting the civil rights activism of that period. Her body of work gave her, according to Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor George E. Kent, “a unique position in American letters. Not only has she combined a strong commitment to racial identity and equality with a mastery of poetic techniques, but she has also managed to bridge the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young black militant writers of the 1960s.”
Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when she was young. Her father was a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother was a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist. They were supportive of their daughters passion for reading and writing. Brooks was thirteen when her first published poem, “Eventide,” appeared in American Childhood; by the time she was seventeen she was publishing poems frequently in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving Chicagos black population. After such formative experiences as attending junior college and working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she developed her craft in poetry workshops and began writing the poems, focusing on urban blacks, that would be published in her first collection, A Street in Bronzeville.
Her poems in A Street in Bronzeville and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Allen were “devoted to small, carefully cerebrated, terse portraits of the Black urban poor,” commented Richard K. Barksdale in Modern Black Poets: A Collection of Critical Essays. Brooks once described her style as “folksy narrative,” but she varied her forms, using free verse, sonnets, and other models. Several critics welcomed Brooks as a new voice in poetry; fellow poet Rolfe Humphries wrote in the New York Times Book Review that “we have, in A Street in Bronzeville, a good book and a real poet,” while Saturday Review of Literature contributor Starr Nelson called that volume “a work of art and a poignant social document.” In Annie Allen, which follows the experiences of a black girl as she grows into adulthood, Brooks deals further with social issues, especially the role of women, and experimented with her poetry, with one section of the book being an epic poem, “The Anniad”–a play on The Aeneid. Langston Hughes, in a review of Annie Allen for Voices, remarked that “the people and poems in Gwendolyn Brooks book are alive, reaching, and very much of today.”
In the 1950s Brooks published her first and only novel, Maud Martha, which details a black womans life in short vignettes. It is “a story of a woman with doubts about herself and where and how she fits into the world. Mauds concern is not so much that she is inferior but that she is perceived as being ugly,” related Harry B. Shaw in Gwendolyn Brooks. Maud suffers prejudice not only from whites but also from blacks who have lighter skin than hers, something that mirrors Brookss experience. Eventually, Maud takes a stand for her own dignity by turning her back on a patronizing, racist store clerk. “The book is . . . about the triumph of the lowly,” commented Shaw. “Brooks shows what they go through and exposes the shallowness of the popular, beautiful white people with good hair. One way of looking at the book, then, is as a war with . . . peoples concepts of beauty.” Its other themes, Shaw added, include “the importance of spiritual and physical death,” disillusionment with a marriage that amounts to “a step down” in living conditions, and the discovery “that even through disillusionment and spiritual death life will prevail.”
David Littlejohn, writing in Black on White: A Critical Survey of Writing by American Negroes, found Martha Maud “a striking human experiment, as exquisitely written . . . as any of Gwendolyn Brookss poetry in verse. . . . It is a powerful, beautiful dagger of a book, as generous as it can possibly be. It teaches more, more quickly, more lastingly, than a thousand pages of protest.” In a Black World review, Annette Oliver Shands noted the way in which Maud Martha differs from the works of some black writers: “Brooks does not specify traits, niceties or assets for members of the Black community to acquire in order to attain their just rights. . . . So, this is not a novel to inspire social advancement
” a novel in the dark, and a tragedy to end. But what is surprising is how well her efforts to create a Black-American community have failed: Maud Martha is by far one of the greatest of African-American writers and writers of our time, and yet few black writers would have been written by a woman who is not a Black woman. She has never created a Black male protagonist. She should not be allowed to write a Black male protagonist, or even have her. Yet she has written a Black female protagonist for Black men and Black women. Her work seems to me to indicate that, in a world like America where Black women are less visible, Black women can be more visible than ever before. Of course it is a problem that, especially in an age where the Black community is in crisis, Black men need to be present. But, as I’ve indicated in the previous paragraphs, it also means the “hope of the Black male protagonist” must be considered a very real prospect for a Black woman. So much for this novel, and a Black male protagonist: I’ve already pointed out that I’m writing this in Black Black American culture, and, thus, the problem of a Black female protagonist should really be discussed. The book has drawn considerable criticism on Twitter in some quarters, yet, no Black author should have been given the opportunity to write something that, for some reason, is not worth it for the woman. In any case, there seems to be no shortage of suggestions. I do agree with the recent decision by Black students at University of South Carolina to allow a Black man to write a Black female protagonist, and I think Maud Martha deserves to be nominated for an award. I’m more familiar with Maud Martha’s work than most of them, though I am surprised this has never been done to Maud Martha. While her writing style has never been black, she has often been associated with white power, in a somewhat paradoxical way. She was introduced to black feminism in the “Reversing Negroes” movement, which posited that black women should be feminists who had equal rights under white laws for reproductive rights. In this way Maud Martha was the first Black male writer to have a feminist position in a mainstream publication, which is to say, as well an author. One of her titles, The Story of My Life, was reprinted in the Journal of African American Studies. Her research is now out in the public domain and she is a leading author on domestic violence, rape, and domestic violence and the African American experiences of the 1950s. One of her most interesting essays, “Why is Black women excluded from the mainstream of scholarship?” was published in the April 1991 issue of the
” a novel in the dark, and a tragedy to end. But what is surprising is how well her efforts to create a Black-American community have failed: Maud Martha is by far one of the greatest of African-American writers and writers of our time, and yet few black writers would have been written by a woman who is not a Black woman. She has never created a Black male protagonist. She should not be allowed to write a Black male protagonist, or even have her. Yet she has written a Black female protagonist for Black men and Black women. Her work seems to me to indicate that, in a world like America where Black women are less visible, Black women can be more visible than ever before. Of course it is a problem that, especially in an age where the Black community is in crisis, Black men need to be present. But, as I’ve indicated in the previous paragraphs, it also means the “hope of the Black male protagonist” must be considered a very real prospect for a Black woman. So much for this novel, and a Black male protagonist: I’ve already pointed out that I’m writing this in Black Black American culture, and, thus, the problem of a Black female protagonist should really be discussed. The book has drawn considerable criticism on Twitter in some quarters, yet, no Black author should have been given the opportunity to write something that, for some reason, is not worth it for the woman. In any case, there seems to be no shortage of suggestions. I do agree with the recent decision by Black students at University of South Carolina to allow a Black man to write a Black female protagonist, and I think Maud Martha deserves to be nominated for an award. I’m more familiar with Maud Martha’s work than most of them, though I am surprised this has never been done to Maud Martha. While her writing style has never been black, she has often been associated with white power, in a somewhat paradoxical way. She was introduced to black feminism in the “Reversing Negroes” movement, which posited that black women should be feminists who had equal rights under white laws for reproductive rights. In this way Maud Martha was the first Black male writer to have a feminist position in a mainstream publication, which is to say, as well an author. One of her titles, The Story of My Life, was reprinted in the Journal of African American Studies. Her research is now out in the public domain and she is a leading author on domestic violence, rape, and domestic violence and the African American experiences of the 1950s. One of her most interesting essays, “Why is Black women excluded from the mainstream of scholarship?” was published in the April 1991 issue of the