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The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 1 Book Cover
The American Tradition in Literature, Volume 1, 10/e
George Perkins, Eastern Michigan University
Barbara Perkins, University of Toledo-Toledo


About the Author

Recipient of the first Pulitzer Prize awarded to an African-American, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote throughout her career in reference to blacks and to the black experiences of the last half of the twentieth century.

Born in Topeka, Kansas, Gwendolyn Brooks was raised on the South Side of Chicago, a traditionally black enclave, fraught with all of the problems that confront any impoverished urban area. In such a social and economic context, however, Gwendolyn seems to have known, from a very early age, that her future included writing. She began keeping a journal at the age of eleven and had met Langston Hughes and James Weldon Johnson by the age of sixteen.

After graduation from Englewood High School, she attended Wilson Junior College in Chicago in 1936. Following her marriage in 1939, her attention turned to raising her family. She kept writing poetry, however, studying her craft, at the same time, by attending writing classes at the South Side Community Art Center with Inez Stark, a member of the board of Chicago's Poetry. In 1943, Brooks won a Midwestern Writers' Conference Award in poetry, notice that led to the publication of her first book, A Street in Bronzeville in 1945, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and her Pulitzer Prize for Annie Allen (1949).

Prior to the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, Brooks' poetry rested solidly in the mainstream of American literary tradition, but with the groundswell for political, economic, and social franchise for Black Americans, she refocused her attention to social themes congruent with the urgencies of the day. She responded to the tragic assassinations of 1968 with In the Mecca in the same year. Subsequently, she shifted publishers from New York to all-Black publishers with whom she released Riot in 1969.

Throughout the remainder of her life, Brooks wrote and published volume after volume of poetry, along with criticism and some short fiction. The remainder of her works include Family Pictures (1970) and three works in 1971: Aloneness (1971), Black Position, No. 1 (1971), and The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (1971). In 1972, in addition to publishing Black Position, No. 2, Brooks began drafting her autobiography, the first part entitled, Report from Part One. In 1974 she published The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves; or, What You Are You Are, followed by Beckonings and Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing in 1975.

Brooks was just as active in the last two decades of her life. Her works included
Young Poet's Primer (1980), disembark (1981), and Black Love (1982).
The Near Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems ( 1986 ). Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle ( 1988 ). A collection of letters, Maud Martha, appeared in 1953.

In the last decade of her productivity, she released, among other works, Primer for Blacks (1991), Winnie (1991), Blacks (1991), Coming Home (1992), Selected Poems (1995), and Report from Part Two (1996).

In addition to her gifts as a poignant poet, Gwendolyn Brooks was widely lauded for her generosity. Throughout her career, she worked closely with young people, encouraging them and supporting educational opportunities for thousands of the poor and disenfranchised. She was active right up to her death on December 3, 2000.