Gwendolyn_Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks 1917- 2000 In what ways am I outside the mythical norm. The ways that I see Gwendolyn Brooks as a person who doesn’t let things get her down. She went after success and achieved it. I too am going after my dream of being a drug and alcohol counselor. I haven’t been outside the mythical norm. My actions have led me to be in the mythical norm. The privileges I have received from being inside the mythical norm are the right to learn and grow from education. Gwendolyn Brooks is inside the mythical norm. She wasn’t oppressed as a writer she was always encouraged. She was privileged to have mentors that helped her put her work in the best place and to receive awards for her work. Gwendolyn Brooks is like me in the fact that she is a woman and mother. Unlike me she is black. We are from the same middle class. We are both heterosexual. We both have the ability to see what is right in the world and to focus on that. I have been inspired by her attitude of belief in herself. She always wrote and made sure her writings were read by all people. Even when she became more political in her writings she made sure that everyone could read her writings and understand them. Brooks grew up in Chicago the daughter of a schoolteacher and a janitor. Her parents read to her and encouraged her to do well in school. According to George kent she was “ spurned by members of her own race because she lacked social or athletic abilities, a light skin , and good grade hair.” Brooks spent most of her childhood writing. She received compliments on her poems and encouragement from James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, some writers she corresponded with. By the age of 16 she had written over 75 poems.. She has remained associated with Chicago’s south side. Brooks attended Hyde Park High School, the leading white high school in the city, transferred to all black Wendell Phillips, then to integrated Englewood High school. These three school gave her a perspective on racial dynamics that continued throughout her “Evantide” her first poem was published in American Childhood Magazine in 1930 By 1934 Brooks had become an adjunct member of the staff of the Chicago Defender and had published almost 100 of her poems in a weekly poetry column.. After graduating from Wilson Junior College in 1936 she worked as director of publicity for a youth organization of the N.A.A.C.P. In 1938 she married Henry Blakely, another young writer and moved to a kitchenette apartment on Chicagos South Side. During the births of her two children , she became associated with the group of writers involved in Harriet Monroes still-extant Poetry: a Magazine of Verse. By 1943 she had won the Midwestern Writers Conference Poetry Awatrd. In 1945 her first book of poetry “A Street in Bronzeville” brought her instant critical acclaim. Her second book of poems “Annie Allen” 1949 won Poetrys magazine Eunice Tietjens Prize.. She won her first Guggenheim Fellowship and she became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and letters. In 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize.Brooks topic for most of her writings at this point were day to day occurrences in an African American life. In them sh “used a strict technical form, lofty word choice and complicated word play. Critics labeled her early work as intellectual and scholarly.” These poems speak out about the oppression of black people and women, some of them require close reading to understand the true meanings.She spoke about the prejudice because of light skinned black people. In Annie Allen she examines the traditional roles of mother and father and husband and wife, concluding that they can be damaging to those who try to live up to artificial ideals. Her messages are hidden in her complicated language. President John F. Kennedy invited her to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962. Her first teaching job was at a poetry workshop at Columbia College in 1963. In 1967 Brooks work received a new tone and vision. She changed to a more simpler writing style so her themes could come more strongly. This was because of her growing political awareness. As seen in “Selected Poems” her new strong woman ideals were put out there. A turning point in her career.