Free Essays on Gwendolyn Brooks

Writing with uncommon strength, Gwendolyn Brooks creates haunting images of black America, and their struggle in escaping the scathing hatred of many white Americans. Her stories, such as in the "Ballad of Rudolph Reed", portray courage and perseverance. In those like "The Boy Died in My Alley" Brooks portrays both the weakness of black America and the unfortunate lack of care spawned from oppression. In "The Ballad of Chocolate Mabbie" Brooks unveils another aspect of her skill by entering the domestic arena with the lingering limitations imposed by prejudice. These aspects, such as strength and finesse, are among Brooks great attributes. Worthy of exploration, Brooks powerful and haunting techniques can be separated and explored in the above mentioned poems. Each work contains a specific tactic, which effectively promotes her ideas. It is for that reason, tactics mixed with ideas, which have placed Brooks among the finest poets. Perhaps because of Brooks' use of a stiff format, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" may be her strongest work. Imbuing the poem with incredible lines and description, Brooks transforms Rudolph Reed, who is the character the poem is built around, into a storybook hero, or a tragic character whose only flaw was the love he held for his family. Brooks creates a strong, solid character who is more than another fictional martyr, but a human being. The Finesse she imbued in this work from the first stylized stanza: "Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew." (1081, 1-4) Here brooks' symbolic use of the word oakened, coupled with the use of a rhyme scheme of the second and last sentence of every stanza causes the reader to more deeply feel what the character and his family are going through. Using the idea of a dream home, Brooks stabbed to the heart of the American dream and where those of African descent fit into it. Eve ry person, man or woman, h... Free Essays on Gwendolyn Brooks Free Essays on Gwendolyn Brooks Writing with uncommon strength, Gwendolyn Brooks creates haunting images of black America, and their struggle in escaping the scathing hatred of many white Americans. Her stories, such as in the "Ballad of Rudolph Reed", portray courage and perseverance. In those like "The Boy Died in My Alley" Brooks portrays both the weakness of black America and the unfortunate lack of care spawned from oppression. In "The Ballad of Chocolate Mabbie" Brooks unveils another aspect of her skill by entering the domestic arena with the lingering limitations imposed by prejudice. These aspects, such as strength and finesse, are among Brooks great attributes. Worthy of exploration, Brooks powerful and haunting techniques can be separated and explored in the above mentioned poems. Each work contains a specific tactic, which effectively promotes her ideas. It is for that reason, tactics mixed with ideas, which have placed Brooks among the finest poets. Perhaps because of Brooks' use of a stiff format, "The Ballad of Rudolph Reed" may be her strongest work. Imbuing the poem with incredible lines and description, Brooks transforms Rudolph Reed, who is the character the poem is built around, into a storybook hero, or a tragic character whose only flaw was the love he held for his family. Brooks creates a strong, solid character who is more than another fictional martyr, but a human being. The Finesse she imbued in this work from the first stylized stanza: "Rudolph Reed was oaken. His wife was oaken too. And his two girls and his good little man Oakened as they grew." (1081, 1-4) Here brooks' symbolic use of the word oakened, coupled with the use of a rhyme scheme of the second and last sentence of every stanza causes the reader to more deeply feel what the character and his family are going through. Using the idea of a dream home, Brooks stabbed to the heart of the American dream and where those of African descent fit into it. Eve ry person, man or woman, h... Free Essays on Gwendolyn Brooks Although she was born on 7 June 1917 in Topeka, Kansasthe first child of David and Keziah BrooksGwendolyn Brooks is "a Chicagoan." The family moved to Chicago shortly after her birth, and despite her extensive travels and periods in some of the major universities of the country, she has remained associated with the city's South Side. What her strong family unit lacked in material wealth was made bearable by the wealth of human capital that resulted from warm interpersonal relationships. When she writes about families thatdespite their daily adversitiesare not dysfunctional, Gwendolyn Brooks writes from an intimate knowledge reinforced by her own life. Brooks attended Hyde Park High School, the leading white high school in the city, but transferred to the all-black Wendell Phillips, then to the integrated Englewood High School. In 1936 she graduated from Wilson Junior College. These four schools gave her a perspective on racial dynamics in the city that continues to influence her work. Her profound interest in poetry informed much of her early life. "Eventide," her first poem, was published in American Childhood Magazine in 1930. A few years later she met James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes, who urged her to read modern poetryespecially the work of Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and e. c. cummingsand who emphasized the need to write as much and as frequently as she possibly could. By 1934 Brooks had become an adjunct member of the staff of the Chicago Defender and had published almost one hundred of her poems in a weekly poetry column. In 1938 she married Henry Blakely and moved to a kitchenette apartment on Chicago’s South Side. Between the birth of her first child, Henry, Jr., in 1940 and the birth of Nora in 1951, she became associated with the group of writers involved in Harriet Monroe's still-extant Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. From this group she received further encouragement, and by 1943 she had won the Mid...