Gwendolyn Brooks Research Paper

Gwendolyn Brooks greatly helped the world through her poetry. By focusing on writing poetry that brought awareness toward minorities, she helped many people become receptive of those minorities. Overall, Gwendolyn Brooks was a very important woman, and her poetry did wonders for the philosophy of our world. FIX LATER. Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in Chicago in the 1920s, during the time of the Great Migration, a name given to the masses of black people moving to larger, more socially accepting cities. The Great Migration in Chicago caused there to be a great demand for real estate from people in the black community. However, due to racial bias in many of the real estate firms in Chicago, most African American people were forced to live in Southern

Her mother was a teacher and her father, the son of a runaway slave, was a janitor. As an African American family in the 1900s, life was more difficult for them than it was for many of their white counterparts. For instance, throughout her education, Gwendolyn was often teased and bullied by her white and light-skinned classmates for the deepness of her skin tone. Gwendolyn was a shy, quieted girl, and she often channeled her feelings through poetry, giving her a talent for words at a young age. This talent did not go unnoticed by her mother, and she arranged for Gwendolyn to meet Langston Hughes in 1936. Inspired by meeting such an extraordinary man, Gwendolyn went to college and then published her first poetry book, titled A Street in Bronzeville. After this, poetry became a primary part of Gwendolyn’s life, and allowed her talk about public issues through metaphors and imagery. Gwendolyn’s poems mostly focused on bringing awareness to the black community and the discrimination they faced on a daily basis, but they also reached out to other minority groups. Gwendolyn not only had to face the challenges of being black in the 1940s, but also had to overcome the difficulties of being a woman in this time period. However, Brooks overcame the adversity by publishing numbers of poetry collections, and eventually, in 1950, becoming the first African American to win the

For instance, Brooks writes, “ The only sanity is a cup of tea.” and uses it as a metaphor to describe the little amount of domesticism and peace that the boy has with all the destruction and “breaking glass” that he is doing. The cup of tea is also a metaphor for one’s personal preference going back to the old saying “it’s not my cup of tea”. In the ghetto, preference is a luxury that they cannot afford often, so when they have the ability to speak their mind or give an opinion on any matter, it keeps them sensible. However, because people like the boy, who live in the ghetto, are often not able to have an opinion, they have to take matters into their own hands, thus “breaking glass” and the boys’ destruction of his domestic prison. Additionally, in this same stanza, Brooks also uses, “the music is in the minors” as a metaphor to show the tone of the story. Brooks is not referring to actual music, but uses the music as a metaphor for the events happening in the ghetto (ie: destruction, violence, etc). Additionally, in most musical instruments the minor chords play music that sounds dismal, or even ominous. By describing the music as dark and sinister, Brooks creates a tone of fear and anger around the ghetto and the current state of the people’s emotional and physical