Gwendolyn Brooks - 1917
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I. Biography
Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. She was the daughter of a school teacher and a janitor who couldn't afford to finish his schooling. By the young age of 16, Brooks had an amazing 75 published poems in her portfolio (Smith 13). She was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Library Resources from the Gale Group. She also won many other awards in her career, their sum far surpassing her Pulitzer Prize (Smith 3).
In the 1960s Brooks deviated from her universal writing style, joining the black power movement (Smith 1). Later she claimed she had joined the movement to help inform African American youth of their heritage, which they were forgetting at the time (Tate 1). However, unlike other black writers of the time, she did not look differently upon blacks or whites in her writing, nor did she make sweeping assumptions (Clark 1). She also participated in many community service projects, including the youth acting group "The Rangers" and recited poetry to inmates (Tate 12).
Her first published work, A Street in Bronzeville , was the only book to specifically focus on black life before her transition in the 1960s. However she would not 'hit it big' until her second collection, Annie Allen hit the shelves; it netted her the Pulitzer Prize, along with heavy praise (Smith 2). Some critics claim her works expose and focus on rage, while others uphold that they all have a sense of communal pity and care (Tate 3; Stern 4).
Other titles she has published include Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1967), Beckonings (1971), The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves (1974), Report from Part One: An Autobiography (1991), Report from Part Two (1996), and a new edition of Selected Poems to be published in 1999.
Brooks is still living today and is currently working on a new publication, Library Resources from the Gale Group. She is a warrior for African American ethics and history, as well as a excellent poet who is treasured by many.
II. Works Cited
"Gwendolyn Brooks." Library Resources from the Gale Group. The Gale Group.1999.
http://www.gale.com
Clark, Norris B. "Gwendolyn Brooks and Black." A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction. Maria K. Mootry and Gary Smith, Eds. University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Smith, Gary. "Gwendolyn Brooks' 'A Street in Bronzeville:' The Harlem Renaissance and the Mythologies of Black Women." MelUS Fall 1983: 3346.
Stern, Fredrick C. "The Populist Politics of Gwendolyn Brooks' Poetry." MidAmerica Volume XII 1985: 11119.
Tate, Claudia, ed. "Gwendolyn Brooks and Claudia Tate: In an Interview in Black Women Writers at Work." Continuum 1983:3948.
This essay was submitted by a student of Suzanne Dilday, a teacher at Benton High School in Benton, Arkansas.