Brooks, Gwendolyn 171of black resistance and hope. In “Paul Robeson,” she re-
members the man, singer, and activist and the magnitude
of his message for Black fraternity. And in “I Am a Black,”
Brooks ponders the rhetorical switch from black to Afri-
can American, refusing to relinquish the importance of the
term “black” as a connection to people of African descent
around the world and as a powerful statement against nega-
tive stereotypes.
Although there are many recurrent themes in Gwendo-
lyn Brooks’s work, one of the most predominant is her dis-
cussion of the lives of everyday African American women.
From A Street in Bronzeville to In Montgomery and Other
Poems, published posthumously in 2003, Brooks consid-
ers the oft en-overlooked position of ordinary black women
and the lives they live. She has a way of never judging her
subjects and is the ultimate observer. In “Sadie and Maud,”prominent poets of the Harlem Renaissance, such as James
Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who encouraged
her writing and lauded her poetry.
In 1943, Brooks received an award from the Midwest-
ern Writer’s Conference, and in 1945, she published her fi rst
book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville. Shortly thereaft er,
she received the Guggenheim Fellowship. In Bronzeville,
Brooks presented, expertly, the sights and sounds of life
for African Americans in her Chicago suburb. In 1949,
she published another collection of poems, Annie Allen,
for which she was the fi rst African American to receive the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and she followed it with her only
novel, Maud Martha (1953). In the Mecca (1968) featured
Brooks’s musings on Black Power as an alternative form of
black activism and considered the importance of such fi g-
ures as Malcolm X and the Chicago gang, the Blackstone
Rangers. Aft er In the Mecca, Brooks’s personal engagement
with Black Power developed, and she left her longtime pub-
lisher, Harper & Row, and thereaft er published only with
black-owned presses for the rest of her career. Also in 1968,
Brooks was named the Poet Laureate of Illinois. And in
1972 and 1996, Brooks published her two-part autobiogra-
phy, Report from Part One and Report from Part Two.
From the beginning of her career, Brooks refused to
shy away from complicated issues. In “Th e Mother,” she
tackled the emotional trauma of abortion. Rather than take
a side on the controversy, Brooks handles the personal re-
percussions for the mother of making a decision that she
will never be able to forget because of “the children you
got that you did not get.” She also illustrated her engage-
ment with the changing realities of African American life.
In her most famous poem, “We Real Cool” (1960), Brooks
considers the problems of alcohol, drugs, and violence as
contributors to the deaths of so many young black men.
Th rough her use of plain language and bold line breaks,
Brooks posits the premature deaths of these boys as a com-
munity epidemic. And in “Gay Chaps at the Bar” and “Th e
Progress,” Brooks muses on the troubles faced by black
World War II veterans upon their return home.
Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems serve as a touchstone of
African American history throughout the 20th century.
Brooks documented the changing tenor of black activism
from the Harlem Renaissance to Black Power, to begin to
understand the importance of these movements for social
change. In “Malcolm X,” Brooks considers the signifi cance
of the former Nation of Islam leader as an enigmatic fi gure
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, holding a copy of her book A Street in
Bronzeville, published in 1945 , was the fi rst African American
woman to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Library of Congress)