Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won thePulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, forAnnie Allen,[1] making her the firstAfrican American to receive aPulitzer Prize.[2][3]
Throughout her prolific writing career, Brooks received many more honors. A lifelong resident ofChicago, she was appointedPoet Laureate ofIllinois in 1968, a position she held until her death 32 years later.[4] She was also named the U.S.Poet Laureate for the 1985–86 term.[5] In 1976, she became the first African-American woman inducted into theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters.[6]
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, inTopeka, Kansas, and was raised on theSouth Side of Chicago, Illinois. She was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah (Wims) Brooks.[2] Her father, a janitor for a music company, had hoped to pursue a career as a doctor but sacrificed that aspiration to support getting married and raising a family.[2] Her mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music.[2] Brooks' mother had taught at the Topeka school that later became involved in theBrown v. Board of Education racial desegregation case.[7] Family lore held that Brooks' paternal grandfather had escapedslavery to join theUnion forces during theAmerican Civil War.[8]
When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during theGreat Migration, and from then on, Chicago remained her home.[2] She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life.[2] In a 1994 interview, she remarked:
Living in the city, I wrote differently than I would have if I had been raised in Topeka, KS ... I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That's my headquarters.[9]
According to biographerKenny Jackson Williams, due to the social dynamics of the various schools, in conjunction with the era in which she attended them, Brooks faced much racial injustice. Over time, this experience helped her understand the prejudice and bias in established systems and dominant institutions, not only in her own surroundings but in every relevant American mindset.[11]
Brooks began writing at an early age and her mother encouraged her, saying: "You are going to be the ladyPaul Laurence Dunbar."[12] During her teenage years, she began filling books with ''careful rhymes'' and ''lofty meditations", as well as submitting poems to various publications.[2] Her first poem was published inAmerican Childhood when she was 13.[2] By the time she had graduated from high school in 1935, she was already a regular contributor toThe Chicago Defender.[10]
After her early educational experiences, Brooks did not pursue a four-year college degree because she knew she wanted to be a writer and considered it unnecessary. "I am not a scholar," she later said.[9] "I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write."[9] She graduated in 1936 from a two-year program at Wilson Junior College, now known asKennedy-King College, and at first worked as a typist to support herself while she pursued her career.[9]
Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine,American Childhood, when she was 13 years old.[6][2] By the age of 16, she had already written and published approximately 75 poems. At 17, she started submitting her work to "Lights and Shadows", the poetry column of theChicago Defender, an African-American newspaper. Her poems, many published while she attended Wilson Junior College, ranged in style from traditionalballads andsonnets to poems usingblues rhythms infree verse.[13] In her early years, she received commendations on her poetic work and encouragement fromJames Weldon Johnson,Richard Wright andLangston Hughes.[14] James Weldon Johnson sent her the first critique of her poems when she was only 16 years old.[14]
Her characters were often drawn from theinner-city life that Brooks knew well. She said, "I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material."[2]
By 1941, Brooks was taking part in poetry workshops. A particularly influential one was organized by Inez Cunningham Stark, an affluent white woman with a strong literary background. Stark offered writing workshops at the newSouth Side Community Art Center, which Brooks attended.[15] It was here she gained momentum in finding her voice and a deeper knowledge of the techniques of her predecessors. Renowned poetLangston Hughes stopped by the workshop and heard her read "The Ballad of Pearl May Lee".[15] In 1944, she achieved a goal she had been pursuing through continued unsolicited submissions since she was 14 years old: two of her poems were published inPoetry magazine's November issue. In the autobiographical information she provided to the magazine, she described her occupation as a "housewife".[16]
Brooks published her first book of poetry,A Street in Bronzeville (1945), withHarper & Brothers, after a strong show of support to the publisher from authorRichard Wright.[15] It consists of a series of poems related the lives of African Americans in the Chicago neighborhood.[17] Wright said to the editors who solicited his opinion on Brooks' work:
There is no self-pity here, not a striving for effects. She takes hold of reality as it is and renders it faithfully. ... She easily catches the pathos of petty destinies; the whimper of the wounded; the tiny accidents that plague the lives of the desperately poor, and the problem of color prejudice among Negroes.[15]
The book earned instant critical acclaim for its authentic and textured portraits of life inBronzeville. Brooks later said it was a glowing review byPaul Engle in theChicago Tribune that "initiated My Reputation".[15] Engle stated that Brooks' poems were no more "Negro poetry" thanRobert Frost's work was "white poetry". Brooks received her firstGuggenheim Fellowship in 1946 and was included as one of the "Ten Young Women of the Year" inMademoiselle magazine.[18]
Brooks' second book of poetry,Annie Allen (1949), focused on the life and experiences of a young Black girl growing into womanhood in theBronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. The book was awarded the 1950Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and was also awardedPoetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize.[12]
In 1953, Brooks published her first and only narrative book, a novella titledMaud Martha, which is a series of 34 vignettes about the experience of black women entering adulthood, consistent with the themes of her previous works.[17]Maud Martha follows the life of a black woman named Maud Martha Brown as she moves about life from childhood to adulthood. It tells the story of "a woman with doubts about herself and where and how she fits into the world. Maud's concern is not so much that she is inferior but that she is perceived as being ugly," states author Harry B. Shaw in his bookGwendolyn Brooks.[19] Maud suffers prejudice and discrimination not only from white individuals but also from black individuals who have lighter skin tones than hers, something that is a direct reference to Brooks' personal experience. Eventually, Maud stands up for herself by turning her back on a patronizing and racist store clerk. "The book is ... about the triumph of the lowly," Shaw comments.[19] In contrast, literary scholarMary Helen Washington emphasizes Brooks's critique of racism and sexism, callingMaud Martha "a novel about bitterness, rage, self-hatred, and the silence that results from suppressed anger".[20]
In 1967, the year of Langston Hughes's death, Brooks attended the Second Black Writers' Conference atNashville'sFisk University. Here, according to one version of events, she met activists and artists such asImamu Amiri Baraka,Don L. Lee and others who exposed her to new black cultural nationalism. Recent studies argue that she had been involved in leftist politics in Chicago for many years and, under the pressures ofMcCarthyism, adopted a black nationalist posture as a means of distancing herself from her prior political connections.[21] Brooks's experience at the conference inspired many of her subsequent literary activities. She taught creative writing to some of Chicago'sBlackstone Rangers, otherwise a violent criminal gang. In 1968, she published one of her most famous works,In the Mecca, a long poem about a mother's search for her lost child in a Chicago apartment building. The poem was nominated for theNational Book Award for poetry.[18]
Following her publications with Harper, Brooks published titles beginning in the 1960s with independent Black-owned publishers:Broadside Press,Third World Press as well as her own small presses, Brooks Press and The David Company.[22]
Her autobiographicalReport From Part One, including reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes, came out in 1972, andReport From Part Two was published in 1995, when she was almost 80.[6] Her other works includePrimer for Blacks (1980),Young Poet’s Primer (1980),To Disembark (1981),The Near-Johannesburg Boy, and Other Poems (1986),Blacks (1987),Winnie (1988), andChildren Coming Home (1991).[17] She was a contributor to the 1992 anthologyDaughters of Africa, edited byMargaret Busby.[23]
In 1939, Brooks married Henry Lowington Blakely Jr., whom she met after joining Chicago'sNAACP Youth Council.[6] They had two children: Henry Lowington Blakely III, andNora Brooks Blakely.[2] Brooks' husband died in 1996.[28]
From mid-1961 to late 1964, Henry III served in theU.S. Marine Corps, first atMarine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and then atMarine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay. During this time, Brooks mentored her son's fiancée, Kathleen Hardiman, in writing poetry. Upon his return, Blakely and Hardiman married in 1965.[15] Brooks had so enjoyed the mentoring relationship that she began to engage more frequently in that role with the new generation of young black poets.[15]
Gwendolyn Brooks died at her Chicago home on December 3, 2000, aged 83.[2] She is buried inLincoln Cemetery.[29]
1949,Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize[2]
1950,Pulitzer Prize in Poetry[2] Gwendolyn Brooks in 1950 became the first African-American to be given a Pulitzer Prize. It was awarded for the volume,Annie Allen, which chronicled in verse the life of an ordinary black girl growing up in the Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago's South Side.[30]
2018: On what would have been her 101st birthday, a statue of her, titled "Gwendolyn Brooks: The Oracle of Bronzeville", was unveiled at Gwendolyn Brooks Park in Chicago.[57][58]
^abcdeHawkins, B. Denise (1994)."An Evening with Gwendolyn Brooks".James Madison University Furious Flower Poetry Center.Archived from the original on May 30, 2010. RetrievedMarch 6, 2015. Reprinted fromBlack Issues in Higher Education, November 3, 1994, vol. 11, no. 18, pp. 16, 20–21.
^abMiller, Jason (2009). "Brooks, Gwendolyn". In Finkleman, Paul (ed.).Encyclopedia of African American History: 1896 to the Present. Vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 288.
^Although her biographerKenny Jackson Williams lists this as Clay College of New York, there is otherwise no evidence that such a college ever existed. Other biographies show that Brooks did teach at the City College of New York, and it is likely that "Clay College" is simply a typo for "City College".
^Schoenberg, Nara (February 4, 2016). "Poets exalt a potent South Side voice as city celebrates Gwendolyn Brooks' birth".Chicago Tribune. p. 11, Section 1.
