Gwendolyn Brooks Research Paper

     Gwendolyn Brooks is the female poet who has been most responsive to changes in the black community, particularly in the community’s vision of itself. The first African American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize; she was considered one of America’s most distinguished poets well before the age of fifty. Known for her technical artistry, she has succeeded in forms as disparate as Italian terza rima and the blues. She has been praised for her wisdom and insight into the African Experience in America. Her works reflect both the paradises and the hells of the black people of the world. Her writing is objective, but her characters speak for themselves. Although the

Gwendolyn Brooks was a prominent poem during her time, receiving a Pulitzer Prize for her poem Annie Allen in 1950. She was also the first African-American woman to serve as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and in 1968 was named Illinois’ poet laureate. Brooks lived in Chicago’s south side for most of her life, and its Bronzeville neighborhood was featured in Brooks’ first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville. Brooke’s “kitchenette building” is closely related to her life because Chicago’s south side was filled with kitchenette buildings during that time period, most of which were overcrowded and had poor sanitary

Despite her criticism, Brooks deals with race relations objectively and implicitly recreates the black experience for her readers. Brooks shed the light on the African American story through writing. While she does not take a radical approach, such as young Amiri Baraka, in making demands, or use explicit terms such as “white supremacist”, Brooks, on her own platform, shows intellectuals and color-blind conservatives the horrors of being Black in America. Her main stream style of writing was able to reach people that marches, race riots, and church leaders could not (although, later she wrote

Ruby Bridges, the first African American to go to a white school, she was as brave as a person going into the army. There were death threats to Ruby’s family and in the army you fight and have a chance to die. When Ruby went to this white school federal marshals had to guard her because the riots were so bad. After analyzing several online biographies, Ruby was very brave and wanted to change the way the world looks at race, and she has changed the way the world looks at race.

The famous African American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, grew up on the south-side of Chicago. She paved the way for many female African American woman today. In the The African American Experience textbook there is two amazing poems written by her. One is titled “The Sonnet-Ballad” and the other is titled “We Real Cool”. On the surface these two poems seem to have simple means, but if you dig under the surface there is more than meets the eye. Each poem has the three component that make a poem according to Stephen Henderson. Each poem has a theme, structure, and saturation. Each component is presented in a different way. Its presented in a way that makes the poem more affective in its message, and that is the reason why these poems are so

Would the advances of today be up to such standards without the writings of history? Diary’s and books show the way of life along with what did and did not work. Women such as Martha Ballard and Mary Jemison gave an insight into their life that would have not been accessible to the world we know.

Ruby Bridges was one of the first heroic African Americans to enter an all white elementary school in New Orleans in 1966. She was a brave, little girl who was escorted to school by the U.S. Marshalls. The teachers and protesters said vulgarities things to ruby, and treated her like an outcast. Ruby demonstrated bravery even though she was ostracized, threatened, and surrounded by racists.

Published first during the decade of the 1990s "The Boy Died in My Alley" remains a significant poem of Gwendolyn Brooks as she moves from traditional forms of poetry such as sonnets, ballads to the most unrestrictive free verse and includes the sad rhythm of the blues. This poem offers an amazing juxtaposition of dramatic poetic forms, narrative, and lyric (Guth & Rico). The story is most often simple but with the last line, they transcend the restriction of place and cover universal plight. Most often the characters of the people are memorable only due to fact that they are trying to survive the trials and tribulations of daily living. For example, in the poem, “The Boy Died in My Alley”, the author narrates an incident when a black boy is murdered in her back alley and the policeman asks her whether she has heard the shot. As she was passionate about the bad experiences of black community in the United States, her poetry is mainly about their plight in the society (Guth & Rico). The main focus of the poem, "The Boy Died in My Alley" is to study and analyze the reasons behind the violence that is associated with African-American children who live on the street.

Gwendolyn Brooks is the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. She has also received a lot of awards and fellowships throughout her life. Born in 1917, she started her writing career in poetry at an early age, publishing her first poem in 1930. 1967 was a turning point in her career as it was in this year that she attended the Fisk University Second Black Writers' Conference. In this conference, she has decided to involve herself in the Black Arts Movement. While awareness of social issues and elements of protest is found generally in all her works, some of her critics found in her work an angrier tone after joining the movement.

Gwendolyn brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved to Chicago during the great migration when Brooks was six weeks old. Her first poem was published when she was 13 and at the age of 17, she already had a series of poems published in the poetry column “Lights and shadows” in the Chicago defender newspaper. . After working for The NAACP, she began to write poems that focus on urban poor blacks. Those poems were later published as a collection in 1945. The collection was titled A Street in Bronzeville. A street in bronzeville received critical acclaim but it was her next work, Annie Allen, that was got her the Pulitzer Prize. She lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000 at age of 83.

She was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas and died on December 3, 2000 in Chicago, Illinois. Growing up in this time period affected her work due to the strong historical events that took place; i.e. World War I, Great Depression, World War II. She wrote “We Real Cool” in the 1960’s. Gwendolyn Brooks, the author of “We Real Cool,” was an influential writer in the Contemporary Era, winning the undeniably-prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Gwendolyn

Gwendolyn Brooks in the poem was also trying to point out the negative effects that might happen to a youth if they choose to drop out out school and leave a life of crime.

Gwendolyn Brooks’s poems “We Real Cool” and “Mother” show that Gwendolyn Brooks writes about the world she lives in and what she experiences not in her own life, but in the lives of the people she sees around her. Moving around from school to school as a kid, Brooks was given a rounded perspective on the racial dynamics of the real world, which she shows in some of her work.Gwendolyn Brooks captures the life experiences and events of black lives. Brooks consistently focuses on the struggle of black people, usually associated with the family or in the events of a hostile environment. In her poems, the people typically experience a great pain. Brooks devotes much of her writing to trying to represent the struggles of blacks that she sees in her life every day. In her later years of

She wrote a short novel called 'Maud Martha', based on young black girl growing up in Chicago. In the 1980's she taught at colleges and universities in Illinois and Wisconsin and she basically helped young black poets with their poetry (McMichael and Leonard). Also, In 1930's Brooks earned her associate degree in literature and arts from Wilson Junior College, and she also served as a director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People youth council in Chicago. Brooks early poetry was about economics, racial issues and ordinary people. (Israel).

In The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry vol.2, this is the writer “who suggested that Brooks write a poem on the survival of the inner-city African Americans” (Ramazani, Ellmann, O’Clair 145) In this poem, a boy is trying to be free from society or from the Ghetto community. As the boy escapes, he sees this as an act of treason. Society sees the boy as “our beautiful flaw” but they also call him “barbarous” and “mental little man”.