Gwendolyn Brooks 's The Mother

In “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens”, Alice Walker looks to educate us on the hardships that almost all black women face when trying to express themselves through things such as art. She delves into many sociological and psychological concepts that have affected black women throughout human history. These concepts and ideologies created a realm for mass exclusion, discrimination, and oppression of many African American women, including Alice Walker’s Mother, who Alice utilizes as one of her particular examples. The writing thematically aims to show how these concepts of sexism, racism, and even classism have contributed to black women’s lack of individuality, optimism, and fulfillment for generations. The author does a tremendous job of defending and expanding upon her arguments. She has a credible background, being a black woman that produces the art of literature herself. As well as being raised by one, Walker’s first-hand experience warrants high regard. Therefore, her use of abstract and introspective language is presented clearly and convincingly. Also, her use of evidence and support from sources like Jean Toomer, Virginia Woolf, and Phillis Wheatley, all produce more validity for her stance through poems, quotes, and even experiences. All these individuals have their own accounts pertaining to the oppression of black women and their individuality. Successfully arguing that the artistry plights of black women described in “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens” are

"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

The works of Gwendolyn Brooks has gone through several changes throughout her career. When she first published in 1945, she was eager to be understood by strangers. In her last two poetical collections, however, she has dumped that attitude and gone ?black?. Her change then led her from a major publishing house to smaller black ones. While some critics found an angrier tone in her work, elements of protest had always been present in her writing. Her poetry moves from traditional forms including sonnets, ballads, variations of the Chaucerian and Spenserian stanzas, and the rhythm of the blues to the most unrestricted free verse. To sum up, the popular forms of English poetry appear in her work, but there is some testing as she puts together lyric, narrative, and dramatic poetic forms. In her narrative poetry, the stories are simple but usually go beyond the restrictions of place. In her dramatic poetry, the characters are often memorable because they are everyday survivors not heroes. Her characters are drawn from the underclass of the nation's black slums. Like many urban writers, Brooks has recorded the impact of city life. However, aside from most committed naturalists, she does not entirely blame the city for what happens to people. The city is simply an existing force with which people must deal with. The most dominant theme in Brooks?s work is the

The first stanza of the poem the speaker starts out using the word “you”. By using second person point of view the speaker appears to speak directly to the reader. “You remember the children you got that you did not get” (Brooks 2), here the speaker uses the term “children” to refer to her aborted children, which also gives them an identity. Brooks uses throughout the poem the word “children” instead of “fetuses” which gives the speaker the image of motherhood and a person compared to inanimate object. These are the children she has lost. The speaker goes on throughout this stanza to express to the reader all the things “you” will never get to experience with your children because of the decision to have an abortion. “You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, / Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye” (Brooks 9-10), here the author uses metaphors about food, “snack of them” and “gobbling mother-eye” to illustrate the speakers yearning for motherhood that will never be. This is the only time in the poem other than the title that Brooks will use the word “mother”, all else will be implied that the reader is a mother to

Gwendolyn Brook, a distinguished African American poet, won the Midwestern Conference poetry award in 1943. Brook's work captured blacks lives in the streets of Chicago. For instance, her poem “We Real Cool”, is about black kids who dropped out of school and decided to hang at a Pool hall wasting their lives away. As quoted, “We real cool, we left school, we will jazz June, and we die soon (2:337). Brooks perspectives of her poem is the lives of the black kids struggling for a sense of identity.

In a world in which abortion is considered either a woman's right or a sin against God, the poem "The Mother" by Gwendolyn Brooks gives a voice to a mother lamenting her aborted children through three stanzas in which a warning is given to mothers, an admission of guilt is made, and an apology to the dead is given. The poet-speaker, the mother, as part of her memory addresses the children that she "got that [she] did not get" (2). The shift in voice from stanza to stanza allows Brooks to capture the grief associated with an abortion by not condemning her actions, nor excusing them; she merely grieves for what might have been. The narrator's longing and regret over the children she will never have is highlighted by the change in tone

The idea of Mother Earth is extremely empowering for women; most women believe that, right? Ellen Cronan Rose finds the idea of mother earth tremendously unempowering. Rose writes in her article “The Good Mother: from Gaia to Gilead”, that the imagery of mother earth is deeply problematic and is harmful to the feminist cause. This is a shocking view considering that most women don’t seem to have a problem with that idea. Ellen Cronan Rose states that the “mother earth” metaphor is harmful to the way women are viewed in society because it perpetuates negative stereotypes against women, it views the earth and women primarily as producers, and it overlooks the fact that both men and women are connected to nature. She goes in-depth into how mother earth imagery can impact women.

Focused on stories for the people, by the people, Gwendolyn Brooks writes poetry for more than poetry sake. Writing for something that is greater than personal expression or artistic integrity, what Brooks is able to do throughout her writing is show the life that urban blacks faced in Chicago during the Civil Rights Movement. Refraining from much personal or first person stories, Brooks allows the stories and poems to speak for themselves, leaving the reader to reflect on what has happened on the pages before them and in America as a whole. Worth noting is how little Brooks writes of pleasant times in mid 20th century Chicago.

launched a series of articles to be written titled “What Every Mother Should Know”. This information discussed how mothers could teach their children about reproduction. Following this series, Sanger subsequently published a second series titled “What Every Girl Should Know”. This ultimately started the feminist publication of articles that started a lifetime promotion of birth control for women and their right to choose to use contraceptives to control their fertility and the sizes of their families.

In Gwendeloyn Brooks poem “The Mother” she uses a great deal of diction, tone, imagery as elements to create a whole. She uses descriptive words to create a feeling for the audience and also gives enough of a back story so that the reader can understand. Based on the poem you can sense a feeling of regret, remorse and it is as though she is trying to talk to the children she aborted. The speaker has a perspective that when someone has an abortion they can never change that and they will regret it. She addresses the reader in a personal setting to give him or her sense of emotion of what she was feeling and what she is has gone through in the past to give a personal perspective and reasoning of why she feels how she feels.

In “The Mother”, Brooks discusses the mental torment that she has experienced after having an abortion. She writes that “Abortions will not let you forget” (Brooks 388), meaning that the burdensome decision to have an abortion is something that will haunt her for years, because she agree to end the life of her own child. A woman’s connection to her child is extremely powerful and she must cope with the love that she had extinguished. At first glance, Hemingway’s story illustrates how a pregnancy can upset a happy relationship. The relationship between the man and the

While slavery was still legal in the United States, many African American women and men were restricted from expressing creativity and were not permitted to receive an education (reading and writing). They toiled in the fields, worked as house slaves, or even forced to have children, there was no time to “create”. In Alice Walker’s “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens,” she voices how difficult it was to be a woman at that period of time, especially for African American women that were forced to suppress their talent due to being a slave. She mentions her mother and grandmother’s personal experience in that they never were able to have the freedom to express themselves. Yet, this is a shared experience of all African American women of the past

Dr. Haki Madhubuti, a black author, poet and educator graced Medgar Evers College 2017 black writer’s conference to honor the late Gwendolyn Brooks who was also a poet, author, and literary activist. In addition to speaking very highly of Ms. Brooks’ legacy and the impact she had on others included himself, he emphasizes the importance of elevating black people. Referencing Ms. Brooks decision to live in the black community although she had obtain enough financial success to live elsewhere was because she did not want to become detached from her community, which is place that catches the essence of the black experience that she often spoke about in poems. Throughout his speech, Dr. Haki reiterated “we are under attack” and the “war is still current today” bringing awareness to the current state of many black communities. By magnifying that black people as a whole can curb any disadvantage with love, pride and prominent black figures, puts black people in a position to take responsibility for its own people.

In the beginning of the poem the mother makes it clear that she is reminiscing on her abortions with “Abortions will not let you forget” (line1) from this line we understand that she is a mother, she addresses the audience directly with the word “you” this automatically involves the audience into the poem. The first line brings you into the poem and makes you want to read more. The lines following this gives insight into the first line. Just because someone has an abortion it will not let them forget, the saying out of sight out of mind does not apply in the case. “The children you got that you did not get” (line2) the way Brooks worded this line appeals to me. “ the children you got” meaning the baby or fetuses she was pregnant

Gwendolyn Brooks was a black poet from Kansas who wrote in the early twentieth century. She was the first black woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Her writings deal mostly with the black experience growing up in inner Chicago. This is the case with one of her more famous works, Maud Martha. Maud Martha is a story that illustrates the many issues that a young black girl faces while growing up in a ‘white, male driven’ society. One aspect of Martha that is strongly emphasized on the book is her low self-image and lack of self-esteem. Martha feels that she is inferior for several reasons, but it is mainly the social pressures that she faces and her own blackness that contribute to these feelings of inferiority. It is