Teaching Human Dignity

Biography: Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)

Biography

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born June 7, 1917 in Topeka, Kansas, the elder daughter of Keziah Corine Wims and David Anderson, and the paternal granddaughter of a runaway slave and Union soldier. Shortly after her birth, her family moved to , where Brooks grew up. Brooks met her future husband, Henry Blakely, at a NAACP Youth Council meeting in 1938. They married two years later. She gave birth to two children: Henry Jr. in 1940 and Nora in 1951. She published her first poem, “Eventide,” at the age of thirteen I’m very pleased with the way my in America Childhood Magazine, and went on to author more life turned out. Oh, it hasn’t been all than twenty books of poetry, including Children Coming Home “joy and roses and honey and cream.

(The David Co., 1991); Blacks (1987); To Disembark (1981); But I’m glad that I wanted to write, The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems (1986); Riot and I did write, and I’m glad I stuck

(1969); In the Mecca (1968); The Bean Eaters (1960); Annie Allen with it. … You know, there is no muse (1949), for which she received the ; and A Street whispering in your ear, telling you in Bronzeville (1945). She also wrote numerous other books what to say. You have to work at it. “ including a novel, Maud Martha (1953), and Report from Part Writing is a delicious agony. One: An Autobiography (1972), and edited Jump Bad: A New Chicago Anthology (1971). —GWENDOLYN BROOKS Brooks is known as “the chronicler of the commonplace.”2 Her poetry spanned various forms, including , free-verse, and narrative models, and she worked with the themes of everyday life of ordinary black Americans in the mid-20th century. Her narrative and dramatic poetry tell carefully crafted stories of the black urban poor whose ordinary experiences transcend time and place and whose heroism lies in their daily struggle to navigate the urban world. She masterfully portrayed the realities of themes of poverty, motherhood, and the struggle for black identity through the prism of particularity. Gwendolyn Brooks was a teacher of poetry and creative writing at colleges and universities around the county, including Elmhurst College and . She also earned numerous accolades during her prolific career as a writer and poet. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Brooks was appointed of in 1968, and received fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts as the Jefferson Lecturer in 1994.

She was invited by President John F. Kennedy to speak at the in 1962 where she read “the mother”. Brooks lived in Chicago until her death on Dec. 3, 2000 at the age of 83.†

1 Collins, Glenn. “A Celebration of Life in a Poet’s Own Words.” New York Times 30 Apr. 1990. 2 Shaw, Henry B. Gwendolyn Brooks. Boston: Twayne Books, 1980.15. mcgrath.nd.edu Lesson #2: “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks Teaching Human Dignity

Videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdmG2sTa-i8 Audio of the poem, “The Mother” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/podcasts/76298/the-children-of-the-poor Quraysh Ali Lansana reading Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, “Children of the Poor” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBpxJb24O8A Audio of the poem, “We Real Cool” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dSULGISVqY Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks, 1967 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVZ6KTLN7O8&t=7s Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks at the Library of Congress, 1986 Bibliography for Ann Sexton

Primary Texts Brooks, Gwendolyn. Blacks. Chicago: The David Company, 1988. This collection includesA Street in Bronzeville (1945), Annie Allen (1949), Maud Martha (1953), The Bean Eaters(1960), In the Mecca (1968), and other poems. Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks. Edited by Gloria Wade Gayles. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Report from Part One. Detroit: Broadside, 1972. Report from Part Two. Chicago: , 1996.

Secondary Studies Banks, Margot. Religious Allusion in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012. Kent, George E. A Life of Gwendolyn Brooks. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1990. Melhem, D. H. Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1987. [See pp. 23-24 for a discussion of “the mother.”] Mootry, Maria K. and Gary Smith, eds. A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Shaw, Harry B. Gwendolyn Brooks. Boston: Twayne Books, 1980. [See p. 56 for a discussion of “the mother.”]

mcgrath.nd.edu Lesson #2: “the mother” by Gwendolyn Brooks