Gwedolyn Brooks

Return to What is the "black aesthetic" and who are the writers? =Gwendolyn Brooks=

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Gwendolyn Brooks was born in 1917 and grew up in Chicago. She had a stable and loving family during her youth, and during her high school years she attended an all white establishment, an all black establishment, an integrated school, and finally a junior college. During this time she wrote and published many poems, however she didn't earn critical success until the publication of her first book of poems A Street in Bronzeville, in 1945.

Brooks continued writing and teaching for the next twenty years, until she underwent a change after she attended the 1967 Fisk University Writers Conference. After she witnessed the pride of the black poets who were writing only for an audience of black Americans, she then realized she wanted to capture the ideals of the Black Arts Movement in her writing.

Her next poetic output, In the Mecca, reflected strong themes of racial injustice and oppression. Brooks also left her original publisher for the black publishing house Broadside Press. Her next several poetry collections, published between 1968-1975, (including Riot)  continued to address problems of racial inequality and the need for justice. Having already been an established poet before the Black Arts Movement, Brooks was a mentor and an inspirational figure for a younger generation of black poets.