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Gwendolyn Brooks
- University of Illinois Press
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gWendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917–december 3, 2000) stephen caldwell Wright The second decade of the twentieth century gave rise to tumultuous activity, global and national. The United States, like most of the world, was reeling from the aftermath of war and what was portrayed as the ultimate quest for freedom, making the world safe for democracy while the democracy itself was flawed. For most Americans, this was a time of hope for prosperity. Many other Americans, however, faced a different scenario, one of struggle for redemption and mere acceptance as Americans. Foremost among these, in a severely race-conscious culture, were people of color, particularly Americans of African heritage. In many ways, this climate of ambivalent approaches to race-separation clouded and, in some instances, tainted the artistic endeavors by both blacks and whites and frequently resulted in a “white” standard as the dominant factor in criticism . This is especially evident among the poets and writers of the time. On one hand, writers of color striving for success in the mainstream of publishing were expected to adhere to “universal” themes and to avoid “social themes,” relevant to the condition and struggle of people of color desirous of being seen as equally creative and legitimate in comparison to any other artists. On the other hand, near the end of the second decade of the 1900s, a highly committed cadre of writers of color were involved in igniting the invincible energy of the Harlem Renaissance, perhaps the most noted but not the only cultural, social, artistic, and intellectual movement engineered by people of color in the United States. This kind of renaissance activity was visible in a number of urban cities, not the least of which was Chicago, the home of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. She received the award in 1950 for Annie Allen. Born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks was the first child of Keziah and David Brooks. While she was still a very young baby, the young couple returned to Chicago, which Brooks considered home and where she lived all her life. The family eventually moved into a home on the South Side, and she gWendolyn Brooks • 97 and her brother Raymond, who was born in 1918, grew up sharing a strong bond of mutual respect and admiration that would last until Raymond’s death in 1976. At the time of Brooks’s birth, the racial climate in Chicago, as in most of America, was tense, and two years later came the summer of 1919, which James Weldon Johnson referred to as the “Red Summer” because of the high passions and spilling of much African American blood after proud black soldiers returned to the irony of Jim Crow. Across America, disenchanted Blacks responded to the harsh intimidation and flagrant discrimination at the hands of disgruntled whites, particularly the Ku Klux Klan who remained set against any semblance of racial equality for people of color. Subsequently, at an early age Brooks was exposed to the social restrictions of the time and began to formulate her deep thinking about the vicissitudes of black life and its challenges in the City of Chicago and in America. After graduating from Englewood High School and earning an associates degree from Wilson Junior College in 1936, Brooks continued to expand her literary interests and joined various writers’ groups. The conflicting experiences of her youth and young adulthood would continue to inform her thinking and her writing. Brooks viewed the world as a place of varied possibilities, and she possessed the sensibilities of one who was opposed to all forms of unfairness and inequity. This consciousness would prevail throughout her career, including the 1960s and 1970s when she acknowledged she had been “introduced” to a radical approach to race-consciousness. In fact, Brooks’s collective experiences shaped her vision to such an extent that even her earliest writing is rarely without the direct focus of race-consciousness and the call for positive self-identity. In this context, the willing reader does not confuse Brooks’s concentration on race with racism. Brooks regularly addresses in her work the injustice that accompanies and drives the negative consequences of a race-based society. Focusing on life in Chicago, the thriving center of the Midwest, the breadth of Brooks’s writing highlights an entire community and its cross-cultural diversity . As a young adult, Brooks continued to read widely and seek the wisdom of established writers, living and dead...