DOCSLIB.ORG

The Poet Flâneuse in the American City: Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Diane Di Prima, and Audre Lorde

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Poet Flâneuse in the American City: Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Diane Di Prima, and Audre Lorde THE POET FLÂNEUSE IN THE AMERICAN CITY: GWENDOLYN BROOKS, ADRIENNE RICH, DIANE DI PRIMA, AND AUDRE LORDE By KIRSTEN BARTHOLOMEW ORTEGA A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2006 Copyright 2006 by Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work developed under the thoughtful guidance and encouragement of Dr. Marsha Bryant, to whom I am profoundly grateful. She set an exceptional standard which I will continue to strive to achieve. I also thank my dissertation committee—Dr. David Leverenz, Dr. Amy Ongiri, and Dr. Brian Ward—for their insights and feedback throughout the process. As a whole, this project reflects the enduring support which I received throughout my time at the University of Florida. The generous Alumni Fellowship funded the research and allowed me to to focus all of my energy on writing. My parents, Karen and Bart Bartholomew, are responsible for preparing me for this project with a lifetime of educational support. I thank them for the model they set for me and the unconditional love and financial supplements which made completing the project possible. Heartfelt gratitude to my sister, Lindsey Bartholomew, and to Amy Walsh who listened to the years of anxiety and stress while I wrote and researched. Thanks as well to my graduate student friends, Jill Pruett and Julie Sinn, for being readers/editors, conference roommates, and beer buddies. Finally, this work would never have happened without the faith and sacrifice of my husband, Manuel (Freddy) Ortega. I am in eternal debt to him for making it possible for me to pursue my passion at the expense of some of his own dreams. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................. iii ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................1 Flânerie .........................................................................................................................5 Cities in American Poetry...........................................................................................20 The Labyrinthine City.................................................................................................27 Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde .............................................................................32 2 GWENDOLYN BROOKS: DETECTING FLÂNERIE .............................................38 Character Vignettes from an Unwilling Detective .....................................................52 Poetic Reconstruction .................................................................................................69 3 ADRIENNE RICH: RESISTING ARIADNE............................................................77 Flâneuse as Witness: “Frame”....................................................................................86 Visibility/Invisibility: Ghazal Poems .........................................................................92 Love in the Urban Labyrinth: Twenty-One Love Poems ..........................................100 4 DIANE DI PRIMA: PIRATING FLÂNERIE...........................................................110 Beatniking Poetry Traditions....................................................................................115 1950s Cultural Contexts ...........................................................................................120 Limitations of Appropriation....................................................................................131 5 AUDRE LORDE: ACTIVATING THE FLÂNEUSE ..............................................149 Razing the City as Revolution ..................................................................................151 Empowering the Invisible Margin............................................................................163 Protesting Economic Disenfranchisement................................................................170 6 CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................183 iv WORKS CITED ..............................................................................................................188 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...........................................................................................196 v Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy THE POET FLÂNEUSE IN THE AMERICAN CITY: GWENDOLYN BROOKS, ADRIENNE RICH, DIANE DI PRIMA, AND AUDRE LORDE By Kirsten Bartholomew Ortega August 2006 Chair: Marsha Bryant Major Department: English At a time when the American ideal placed women in the domestic sphere of suburban homes, Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde were all writing from and about such urban centers as Chicago, Boston, and New York. Their poetry negotiates the overlap of public and private space, resisting social expectations for post-WWII women in the city streets and in the poetic tradition. These women poets inherit a patriarchal legacy of urban poetry that responds to Charles Baudelaire’s practice of flânerie as a method of observing and poetically responding to the city. This work examines ways that women undauntedly assert their private identities in public spaces, articulating poetic cities in order to redefine the physical city. The city is a vexed place for women, for their creative and cultural power is contained by social expectations, consumer culture, and the architectural design of urban vi spaces. As flâneuses, Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde are able to participate in the otherwise male-exclusive process of producing city culture. Their voices press both flânerie and urban poetry to incorporate perspectives that reflect different races, classes, genders, and sexualities to create a feminist urban poetics. Building off of work that genders flânerie by Anne Friedberg, Anke Gleber, and Deborah Parsons and off of urban theory of the city as labyrinth by Hubert Damisch, this work questions flânerie’s ability to both empower and prohibit women’s urban gaze. Each of the poets responds to, rejects, or revises flânerie according to her understanding of its ability to empower her feminist poetics. Together, the city poems of Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde validate women’s gazes in the city: they are watching, recording, and contributing to the construction of metaphoric cities. Although the power that flânerie provides women is tempered by its limitations, the perspective of a flâneuse provides a scaffold for establishing a poetic image of the city that reflects the heterogeneous crowd. vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION In this work, I examine the work of four post-WWII women—Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, Diane di Prima, and Audre Lorde—through the lens of flânerie to critique their contributions to defining a feminist urban poetics. These women’s poetry of and thoughts about the city reflect their struggles to define their poetics and lives as separate from what was expected of them as women by both the literary establishment and post- war culture more generally. The city, always a site of paradoxes, provides them freedoms which they are not allowed in suburbia; but the liberties they take by participating in flânerie (whether consciously or not), writing poetry of the city, and living public, urban lives, are contained and restricted by the city’s labyrinthine architectural and social structures as well as by the history and influence of modernist city poetry written by men. Flânerie can provide a method to interrogate various aspects of the city including crowd culture, crime, consumerism, neighborhood mapping, and the aesthetic construction of the city as it will last in our collective, cultural memory. At one level, urban poems by Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde suggest a corrective to Walter Benjamin’s limiting definition of the flâneur as necessarily white, male, and upper-class, enhancing the quintessential urban observer’s ability to interpret the heterogeneous twentieth-century city. As the seminal theorist of flânerie in the twentieth century, Benjamin’s definition of the flâneur—which he derives from Charles Baudelaire—establishes the archetype from which most critics evaluate flânerie. This dissertation establishes evidence of flânerie in women’s poetry in order to emphasize 1 2 valuable breaks that women poets make from Benjamin’s notion of flânerie which can make the practice relevant to current discussions of cities and poetry in American literature. I contribute to current studies of representations of urban space, feminist literary studies, and poetry studies by assessing both the limits and powers of flânerie, particularly for women poets. Although many respected critics (among the women: Susan Buck-Morss, Janet Wolff, and Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson) argue that women’s participation in flânerie is impossible, many twentieth-century poets either respond directly to Baudelaire’s model of writing the city or incorporate forms, perspectives, or images that imply flânerie. Brooks, Rich, di Prima, and Lorde all employ speakers who watch urban events anonymously, such as the unnamed narrator of Brooks’s “In the Mecca,” who moves
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Honorary Degree Recipients 1977 – Present
    Board of Trustees HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS 1977 – PRESENT Name Year Awarded Name Year Awarded Claire Collins Harvey, C‘37 Harry Belafonte 1977 Patricia Roberts Harris Katherine Dunham 1990 Toni Morrison 1978 Nelson Mandela Marian Anderson Marguerite Ross Barnett Ruby Dee Mattiwilda Dobbs, C‘46 1979 1991 Constance Baker Motley Miriam Makeba Sarah Sage McAlpin Audrey Forbes Manley, C‘55 Mary French Rockefeller 1980 Jesse Norman 1992 Mabel Murphy Smythe* Louis Rawls 1993 Cardiss Collins Oprah Winfrey Effie O’Neal Ellis, C‘33 Margaret Walker Alexander Dorothy I. Height 1981 Oran W. Eagleson Albert E. Manley Carol Moseley Braun 1994 Mary Brookins Ross, C‘28 Donna Shalala Shirley Chisholm Susan Taylor Eleanor Holmes Norton 1982 Elizabeth Catlett James Robinson Alice Walker* 1995 Maya Angelou Elie Wiesel Etta Moten Barnett Rita Dove Anne Cox Chambers 1983 Myrlie Evers-Williams Grace L. Hewell, C‘40 Damon Keith 1996 Sam Nunn Pinkie Gordon Lane, C‘49 Clara Stanton Jones, C‘34 Levi Watkins, Jr. Coretta Scott King Patricia Roberts Harris 1984 Jeanne Spurlock* Claire Collins Harvey, C’37 1997 Cicely Tyson Bernice Johnson Reagan, C‘70 Mary Hatwood Futrell Margaret Taylor Burroughs Charles Merrill Jewel Plummer Cobb 1985 Romae Turner Powell, C‘47 Ruth Davis, C‘66 Maxine Waters Lani Guinier 1998 Gwendolyn Brooks Alexine Clement Jackson, C‘56 William H. Cosby 1986 Jackie Joyner Kersee Faye Wattleton Louis Stokes Lena Horne Aurelia E. Brazeal, C‘65 Jacob Lawrence Johnnetta Betsch Cole 1987 Leontyne Price Dorothy Cotton Earl Graves Donald M. Stewart 1999 Selma Burke Marcelite Jordan Harris, C‘64 1988 Pearl Primus Lee Lorch Dame Ruth Nita Barrow Jewel Limar Prestage 1989 Camille Hanks Cosby Deborah Prothrow-Stith, C‘75 * Former Student As of November 2019 Board of Trustees HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENTS 1977 – PRESENT Name Year Awarded Name Year Awarded Max Cleland Herschelle Sullivan Challenor, C’61 Maxine D.
    [Show full text]
  • Gwendolyn Brooks 1917–2000
    Name _____________________________ Class _________________ Date __________________ The Civil Rights Movement Biography Gwendolyn Brooks 1917–2000 WHY SHE MADE HISTORY Gwendolyn Brooks was an award-winning poet, novelist, and a leader of the Black Arts Movement. She was also the first African American poet to receive a Pulitzer Prize. As you read the biography below, think about the role Gwendolyn Brooks’ writing played in the civil rights movement. Why was her poetry significant? Bettmann/CORBIS © As African Americans worked to bring an end to discrimination, most still lived in poor inner city neighborhoods. The Black Power movement focused on the need for social and economic reforms. A Black Arts Movement also emerged to tell the story of African American life. Poet Gwendolyn Brooks was at the forefront of this movement. Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917. Two months after her birth, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she would live for the rest of her life. Brooks was a shy child who developed an interest in writing. Her mother encouraged this interest, and teachers helped develop her talent. At an early age, Brooks was published in national magazines and newspapers. After graduation from high school, Brooks entered community college and received an associate’s degree. She worked at many different jobs, from maid to spiritual healer. Later she would write about these experiences. She was also involved in the Youth Council of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and helped found a club for young black artists and writers. Through this club, she met her future husband, poet Henry Blakely.
    [Show full text]
  • Women's History Month Children's Books.Pdf
    Books for Family Sharing Charles, Tami. Fearless Mary: Mary Fields, American Stagecoach Driver. Illus. by Claire Almon. J-Biography 388.3228 FIEL Set in Cascade, Montana, in 1895, this rip-roaring account tells the true-life tale of a Wild West paragon—the first African American woman to drive a stagecoach while fearlessly fending off outlaws and wild critters to safely deliver the mail. Clinton, Chelsea. She Persisted: 13 American Women Who Changed the World. Illus. by Alexandra Boiger. J-Biography 305.40922 CLIN Concise text and warm watercolor illustrations introduce 13 inspiring women who "did not take no for an answer," including Ruby Bridges, Maria Tallchief, Sonia Sotomayor, and more. She Persisted Around the World and She Persisted In Sports offer more profiles of remarkable individuals. Engle, Margarita. Drum Dream Girl: How One Girl’s Courage Changed Music. Illus. by Rafael López. J-Easy Based on the childhood of musician Millo Castro Zaldarriaga, this lyrical picture book describes how a young girl in 1930s Cuba strived to become a drummer, though reminded again and again that only boys play percussion, and ultimately broke traditional stereotypes to follow her dream. Harrison, Vashti. Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World. J-Biography 305.42 HARR Harrison’s one-page profiles and eye-catching portraits introduce 36 daring and resourceful women from throughout history and across the globe. Also check out the companion volume, Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. Hubbard, Rita Lorraine. The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read. Illus. by Oge Mora. J-Biography 306.3 WALK Born enslaved in 1848 on an Alabama plantation and freed at age 15, Walker grew into adulthood and worked hard for decades to support her family before taking a literacy class and learning to read at the age of 116.
    [Show full text]
  • Elizabeth Acevedo Kwame Alexander Maya Angelou Gwendolyn Brooks
    Jacqueline Woodson is the author of nu- merous award-winning books, includ- POETS ing Last Summer With Maizon, I Hadn't Meant to Tell You This, From the Note- Elizabeth Acevedo* books of Melanin Sun, and Miracle's * Boys. She started writing when she was Kwame Alexander young, but her fiction for kids didn't real- Maya Angelou ly click until she got older. That's when she realized that she could actually help Gwendolyn Brooks the younger generation simply through Mahogany L. Browne her words. That's why Woodson chooses subjects Nikki Giovanni that she thinks kids should be able to Nikki Grimes read about — even if they're topics that are hard to explain or uncomfortable to Angela Johnson talk about. For example, If You Come Terrence Hayes Softly is about an interracial ro- mance; Hush tells the story of a family Langston Hughes placed under the witness protection pro- Tony Medina gram; and Sweet, Sweet Memory depicts the way a young girl copes with her Walter Dean Myers grandfather's death. Visiting Day is a pic- Marilyn Nelson ture book about a little girl's trips to see * her father in prison. Jason Reynolds www.jacquelinewoodson.com Faith Ringgold Jacqueline.Woodson Carole B. Weatherford * @jackiewoodson Jaqueline Woodson jacqueline_woodson Richard Wright * Read more about this author Playing the Read-In bingo game? on the following pages... Woodson has books in these categories: Poetry/Biography/Picture Book “This is what’s most important to me — to show love in all its many forms.” ~ Jacqueline Woodson Kwame Alexander is a poet, educator, and the NYT bestselling author of 28 ELIZABETH ACEVEDO is a NYT best- selling books.
    [Show full text]
  • Urban Renewal and Postwar African American Poetry By
    “If The House Is Not Yet Finished”: Urban Renewal and Postwar African American Poetry By Nilofar Gardezi A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Lyn Hejinian, Chair Professor Eric Falci Professor Steven Lee Professor Waldo E. Martin Spring 2014 Abstract “If The House Is Not Yet Finished”: Urban Renewal and Postwar African American Poetry by Nilofar Gardezi Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Lyn Hejinian, Chair In my dissertation, I investigate the epic writings of Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Robert Hayden to tell the stories of black working class life and culture in postwar New York City, Chicago, and Detroit. I suggest that these writers’ modernist epics offer a counter-poetics to the “clean” modernism of urban renewal and, implicitly, lay bare the racial exclusionism foundational to not only urban renewal’s specific policies of segregation and displacement but also to its aesthetic claims to architectural avant-gardism and newness. This was a time of urban renewal-slum clearance programs that displaced and disrupted black communities—more specifically, a time when race, modernism, and geography all collided in urban renewal—and I argue that we can see both urban renewal and the poetic responses to it in terms of aesthetic modernism. In my first chapter, “Alternative Geographies of Community in Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred,” I claim that Hughes’s poem about the struggle for home and belonging in postwar Harlem invokes the importance of black self-determination and action through the democratic movements of bebop jazz and montage.
    [Show full text]
  • Dr. Brian Gazaille
    English 360: African American Writers Time, Memory, and Identity: Black Women Writers Instructor: Dr. Brian Gazaille (he/him/his) CRN: 31990 Office: PLC 206 Term: Spring 2019 Office Hours: MW 11:00-12:30, and by appointment Location: 107 ESL Phone: 541-346-5935 Time: MWF 10:00-10:50 Email: [email protected] (please give 48 hours for a response!) Course Description This class investigates how black women writers of the twentieth century have taken up the themes of time, memory, and identity. The writers we will explore—Frances E. W. Harper, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Ntzoake Shange, and Lucille Clifton, among others—conceived of literature as remembering. Poems and stories were not just artworks but places in which to recover silenced voices and reflect on the intractable legacies of patriarchy and racism. As Shange so succinctly puts it in her first novel, Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo, literature can be made to represent the “the slaves who were ourselves.” Using the short fiction, poetry, and critical work of the writers noted above, we will examine how black women writers adapted literary forms to wrestle with past and present forms of race- and gender-based oppression. This course counts toward UO’s Multicultural Requirement (Identity, Pluralism, and Tolerance). It also counts for two upper- division categories in English Major II: (1) Literature, 1789-Present, and (2) Race, Ethnicity, and Empire. For students in Major I, the class counts for (1) Literature, 1789-Present or (2) Folklore, Women’s Literatures,
    [Show full text]
  • Dave Gergen to Dave Parker Re
    MEf\IOR/\NIHJM THE WHITE HOUSE WASIIINGTON May 3, 1972 MEMORANDUM FOR: DAVE PARKER FROM: DAVE GERGEN SUBJECT: Prominent Wome~l Last year, you were int( rested in some recomrrj "c1ations of women who might be invited to a special dinner with the President. That idea never got off the ground, and I understand that there are no plans for such a dinner at :lis time. In looking through our past files, however, I have come upon the list which we compiled at that time, and it occurs to me that there Inay still be a number of opportunities when you would want to have prominent wom.en invited to st~~ dinners on an individual basis. For that purpose: I am sending along to you a copy of some other li i~S we once compiled. It would probably be an easy task to come up with additional nm, ~cs if you so desire. cc: Barbara Franklin r-------------------------------------------------------------- Acaflemic Hanna Arendt - Politic'al Scientist/Historian Ar iel Durant - Histor ian Gertrude Leighton - Due to pub lish a sem.ina 1 work on psychiatry and law, Bryn Mawr Katherine McBride - Retired Bryn Mawr President Business Buff Chandler - Business executive and arts patron Sylvia Porter - Syndicated financial colun1.nist Entertainment Mar ian And ",r son l Jacqueline I.. upre - British cellist Joan Gan? Cooney - President, Children1s Television Workshop; Ex(,cutive Producer of Sesaxne St., recently awarded honorary degre' fron'l Oberlin Agnes DeMille - Dance Ella Fitzgerald Margot Fonteyn - Ballerina Martha Graham. - Dance Melissa Hayden - Ballerina Helen Hayes Katherine Hepburn Jv1ahilia Jackson Mary Martin 11ary Tyler Moore Leontyne Price Martha Raye B(~verley Sills - Has appeared at "\V1-I G overnmcnt /Politics ,'.
    [Show full text]
  • Jazz After Dinner
    Jazz After Dinner © 2006 State University of New York Press, Albany Jazz After Dinner On a snowy evening I shall feel his sounds, Quietly moaning, inviting cold air to listen, Call pleasure from golden keys. Old friends Will kiss their company, sit to relax and dream. And music, crying, like an elderly man That sometimes after sunrise greets morning Will pervade the world, profusely fill That evening and me, celebrating life. 3 © 2006 State University of New York Press, Albany For Our Mothers For our mothers Born of humble ancestral origins, Suffering bondage and Enduring the shackles of slavery And nurturing a people and a Country with power and strength And glory and greatness; For our mothers, Queens of the universe Who give us beauty And sweetness and light Radiating with positive energy And spiritual illumination And making us rise to all Propitious occasions wherever They may be in the world; For our mothers Whose gifts to America were Phillis Wheatley and Frances Harper, Elizabeth Keckley and Zora Neale Hurston And Margaret Walker and Gwendolyn Brooks And Alice Walker and Lorraine Hansberry And Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni; 4 © 2006 State University of New York Press, Albany For our mothers who also shared Mary McLeod Bethune and Dorothy Height, Patricia Harris and Barbara Jordan, Mary Berry and Ruth Simmons And Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor And Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King And Oprah Winfrey and Suzan-Lori Parks; For our mothers walking with faith spreading Joy, sleeping with tears from painful years, Shouting when unhappy, praying when the world seemed Hopeless, trying always to be architects for a better World, one that will heal all the people All the sons and daughters and their many generations; For our mothers Pillars of the community And Saviors of the world Who love us.
    [Show full text]
  • CELEBRATING SIGNIFICANT CHICAGO WOMEN Park &Gardens
    Chicago Women’s Chicago Women’s CELEBRATING SIGNIFICANT CHICAGO WOMEN CHICAGO SIGNIFICANT CELEBRATING Park &Gardens Park Margaret T. Burroughs Lorraine Hansberry Bertha Honoré Palmer Pearl M. Hart Frances Glessner Lee Margaret Hie Ding Lin Viola Spolin Etta Moten Barnett Maria Mangual introduction Chicago Women’s Park & Gardens honors the many local women throughout history who have made important contributions to the city, nation, and the world. This booklet contains brief introductions to 65 great Chicago women—only a fraction of the many female Chicagoans who could be added to this list. In our selection, we strived for diversity in geography, chronology, accomplishments, and ethnicity. Only women with substantial ties to the City of Chicago were considered. Many other remarkable women who are still living or who lived just outside the City are not included here but are still equally noteworthy. We encourage you to visit Chicago Women’s Park FEATURED ABOVE and Gardens, where field house exhibitry and the Maria Goeppert Mayer Helping Hands Memorial to Jane Addams honor Katherine Dunham the important legacy of Chicago women. Frances Glessner Lee Gwendolyn Brooks Maria Tallchief Paschen The Chicago star signifies women who have been honored Addie Wyatt through the naming of a public space or building. contents LEADERS & ACTIVISTS 9 Dawn Clark Netsch 20 Viola Spolin 2 Grace Abbott 10 Bertha Honoré Palmer 21 Koko Taylor 2 Jane Addams 10 Lucy Ella Gonzales Parsons 21 Lois Weisberg 2 Helen Alvarado 11 Tobey Prinz TRAILBLAZERS 3 Joan Fujisawa Arai 11 Guadalupe Reyes & INNOVATORS 3 Ida B. Wells-Barnett 12 Maria del Jesus Saucedo 3 Willie T.
    [Show full text]
  • Images of Black Women in Drama
    Curriculum Units by Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute 1980 Volume III: Drama Images of Black Women in Drama Curriculum Unit 80.03.04 by Belinda Carberry I have observed in my classrooms apathy and declining enthusiasm by black female students toward independence, long range planning, and pride. They do not recognize the need and opportunity for black women to become self sufficient and intellectual contributors to their community and family. Many of these students are grooming themselves to become abusive mothers, frustrated and battered wives, neurotic employees, and psychotic citizens. These students fail to realize that by refusing to become active in classroom activities, extracurricular activities in the school,or community related programs their future life style will be socially or economically limited. Michele Wallace says that “The black woman has become a social and intellectual suicide.” 1 The scenario of the unwed mother, the abused wife, the welfare recipient, the crowded home situation, and the low family income is not foreign to these students; yet their awareness of these problems has not provided incentive for them to find alternatives to such an existence. The historical role of the black woman as mother, wife, and uneducated employee has kept young black females from striving to enter the mainstream of job opportunities. Many women have accepted the idea that: 1. They can find a man to take care of them 2. They can handle the abuse as long as he pays the bills 3. It isn’t worth working if all the money goes toward paying a baby sitter 4.
    [Show full text]
  • Biography: Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000)
    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 Chicago, 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 Pulitzer Prize; 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).
    [Show full text]
  • “Women of Color”: a Fight for Change “Through Literature”
    Curriculum Units by Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute 1997 Volume III: American Maid: Growing Up Female in Life and Literature “Women of Color”: A Fight For Change “Through Literature” Curriculum Unit 97.03.07 by Cynthia Roberts Women of color have made many contributions to American life in wide-ranging and diverse fields. Many pioneered the way and opened door after door. These were women who took a mighty step across the stage of America. The 19th and 20th Centuries have brought forth a group of dynamic African American women writers and poets. These writers joined their elders in the struggle for justice and equality to chart strategies and work for change in the conditions of all African Americans. Cultural messages to and for the people expressed black pride , strength, power and beauty, despite oppression along with the call for freedom for all African Americans. Some would say that black women are some of America’s greatest heroes, and that not enough credit has been given to the blacks who have been oppressed beyond recognition. In this unit, students will become familiar with such writers as Phillis Wheatley, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hainsberry, Nikki Giovanni, Gwendolyn Brooks, Maya Angelou and Paule Marshall. These writers represented one of the strongest literary movement in the history of African creativity. These poets not only helped to shape a contemporary literature but they also helped to recapture and reshape a culture. As early as the eighteenth century black poet Phillis Wheatley caught a vision that was to remain characteristic of many black writers during the next two centuries.
    [Show full text]