Signifying Afrika: Gwendolyn Brooks' Later Poetry

"I know now that I am essentially an essential African," declared Gwendolyn Brooks in her 1972 autobiography Report from Part One (45). Her phrasing, which jars the twenty-first-century ear—for how could one of the most acclaimed African-American poets be an "essential African"?—reflects the cultural milieu of the Black Power Movement, which peaked in influence during the mid-1960s and early 1970s. The Black Power Movement was a Black nationalist movement which, along with its armed revolutionary groups like the Black Panthers, encompassed cultural nationalism.¹ Cultural nationalism, according to the critic Scot Brown, "has been broadly defined as the view that African Americans possess a distinct aesthetic, sense of values, and communal ethos emerging from either, or both, their contemporary folkways and continental African heritage" (6). Brooks became influenced by cultural nationalism through her experience with the Black Arts Movement, the artistic arm of the Black Power Movement, an experience that began during an explosive 1967 conference at Fisk University, a well-known story (Brooks, Report from Part One 84–86). Upon arriving at Fisk to read her work, Brooks immediately recognized that the tenor of this gathering was different: "I was in some inscrutable and uncomfortable wonderland. I didn't know what to make of what surrounded me, of what with hot sureness began almost immediately to invade me. I had never been, before, in the general presence of such insouciance, such live firmness, such confident vigor, such determination to mold or carve something DEFINITE" (85). Immersing herself in the energetic politics of the young writers, Brooks gleaned a number of sentiments from Black nationalism, the most significant of which, for the purposes of this article, was the intense focus on African roots for Black Americans. Because of the Black Arts Movement's influence, Brooks twice traveled to Africa to experience physically the land of her ancestors; she embraced the African hairstyle of the natural, vehemently repudiating straightened hair; she was inspired by the African independence wars; and she developed a self-identity as "an essential African." Brooks's poetry reflects her new convictions, and the presence of Africa in her poetry increased dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s.

In this article I explore how Africa signifies in Brooks's later poetry in an effort to tease out the meaning of being essentially African.² First, beginning in 1969 in Riot, Brooks chooses to spell "Afrika" with a "k," which is the Kiswahili spelling (Blacks 479).³ Adopting this spelling allows Afrika to become a linguistic tie between Brooks's own writing and the African language then touted as the best option for diasporic peoples. Second, Afrika provides a center in which Blackness can be located. Brooks wants to connect her audience to the physical continent and people of Africa because, as Brooks has said, "The essential black ideal vitally acknowledged African roots" (Brooks, "Interview" 407). Third, Brooks wrote a number of poems specifically about the struggles against apartheid in South Africa. Primarily published in the 1980s, these poems strive to reinvigorate the American civil rights movement during the Reagan years. This Afrika is inspirational through its hard-fought battles, heroes, and martyrs. Lastly, in several poems, the signifier Afrika has little to do with the physical continent. Afrikan becomes an appellation for all Blacks involved in fighting racism and imperialism. Afrika also designates the mass of the diaspora, signifying the size and breadth of their numbers and power as they themselves become a continent.

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Selecting the Kiswahili spelling of Afrika allows Brooks to gesture toward the African languages that should have been hers, if not for slavery. In reflecting upon her visit to East Africa in 1971, when she visited Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Brooks laments her loss of African languages as a New World person in the African diaspora: "In the New Land, my languages were taken away, the accents and nuances of my languages were taken away. I know nothing of Swahili nor or any other African language." Having invested her literary life in English, Brooks considers "'how long it has taken me to...