Chicago has been home to many great writers like Ernest Hemingway and Lyman Frank Baum, but not all of them used the city as an inspiration in the way that poet Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks did. Using the city’s south side as a backdrop, Brooks published her poetry collection A Street in Bronzeville in 1945, which brought her fame. Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in Chicago in a poor yet stable and loving family. Her father was a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother a teacher and classically trained pianist. Brooks was thirteen when her first published poem, ‘Eventide’, appeared in American Childhood; by seventeen she had published a number of poems in Chicago Defender, a newspaper serving Chicago’s black population. She attended the leading white high school in Illinois, but transferred to an all-black school, then to an integrated school. In 1936 she graduated from Wilson Junior College. These four academies gave her a perspective on racial dynamics in the city, which was to influence the rest of her writing life. While working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she developed her poetic craft, publishing her first collection A Street in Bronzeville in 1945. In this book, which bought her instant critical acclaim, Brooks chronicles the everyday lives, aspirations, and disappointments of the ordinary black people in her own neighborhood. The book also explores the unfair treatment of blacks in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. It was this setting that helped the poet create intense portraits of urban African-Americans living in Chicago. In 1950, Brooks published Annie Allen, for which she received the Pulitzer prize for poetry, making her the first African American to receive the award. In 1962, she was invited to read at a Library of Congress poetry Festival, and in 1968, she became the poet Laureate of Illinois. Through her poetry Brooks portrayed the lives, celebrations and struggles of African-Americans, especially women, while criticizing the prejudice they had towards one another. To illustrate how Brooks portrayed urban black people, I would be analyzing “Kitchenette Building”, “Sadie and Maud” and “The ballad of chocolate Mabbie”, which are all poems from A Street In Bronzeville.
In “Kitchenette Building” Brooks highlights the themes of dreams, poverty, dissatisfaction, and pride and prejudice. Poverty lives in plain sight in this poem and the title “Kitchenette Building” practically suggests the setting. In the 1920s and 1930s, unofficial segregation and discriminatory housing practices began in Chicago. African-Americans lived in small one-bedroom apartments with their entire family and had to share bathrooms and kitchens with several other families. The rent was also high and the living condition was extremely poor. Brooks uses the setting to assert a whole slew of challenges that can stop the average person from dreaming. In stanza 2 of the poem, Brooks introduces the idea of a dream rising
“But could a dream send up through fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms..”
She also poses an important questions in this stanza: can a dream rise above the day to day struggles without getting squashed? When the entirety of your day is spent trying to make the most of your run-down surroundings, who’s got the time or the energy to dream bigger? The setting of the poem is the speaker’s biggest enemy.
Rather than narrate this poem from the first person (“I”), Brooks chooses to use the first person plural perspective (“we”) because she thought that it was important that the speaker not only give his or her perspective, but also speak on behalf of all the other residents of the kitchenettes and also give an intimate perspective. The residents of the kitchenette were not a diverse bunch, they were almost if not all lower income African-Americans. So there was certainly a sense of being in the same boat in terms of the difficulties they faced living in the kitchenettes, as well as some of the struggles they faced in the outside world. This poem wasn’t just about the experiences of a single black person, but of an entire group of people at a very important time in American history. Also Brooks knew she wasn’t just writing to and for the people living in the kitchenette buildings, but people of all races and economic statuses.
Brooks portrayal of a poor family in Bronzeville is nothing short of precise and the first stanza is phenomenally relevant even to this very day.
“We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan
Grayed in and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
“Like “rent.” “Feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.”
Living in a world where money is difficult to come by, but the impact of it’s absence is detrimental, dreaming is considered frivolous because the thought of paying what bills you can, feeding your family and doing everything in your power to provide for them is really all you have on your mind. This reality faced by a lot of African-Americans contradicts the “American dream” and sadly proves that the “American Dream” is close to being nothing more than a myth.
“Kitchenette Building” is as much about dissatisfaction as it is about dreams. Life was extremely tough for the black people living in the Chicago ghettos. Aside from having to work so hard to pay rent, black people had to live in buildings that compromised their health and safety because their landlords refused to make necessary repairs to the buildings. With all this in place, It was hard not to feel some sense of dissatisfaction especially when the tenants didn’t even have the time to think about pursuing their dreams and goals.
The poem “Sadie and Maud” was written at a time when ideals and expectations for African-American women were more enforced and precedent to follow. In a very contemporary fashion Brooks compares the lives of two sisters by emphasizing their lifestyle choices. Sadie and Maude presumably are based to have lived during the early forties somewhere around the area of Southside Chicago presumably Bronzeville a neighborhood in that area that was predominately black during the early twentieth century. Black communities during that time period were much different than they are today. During that time there were more nuclear family units, meaning both a mother and father present in the household, black on black crime was almost nonexistent in comparison with today’s standards, and the civil rights movement was in the planning stages so hope and diligence was truly all people of color had. This poem was about the two very different lives of two sisters, Sadie and Maud. The sisters chose their own lives and received the consequences of their actions.
Sadie, meaning “ Princess” in Old English lives her life unapologetically when she breaks all the ideals and standards that have been put forth for her to follow by society and the hegemonic groups that determine what those standards are. Sadie bore two babies out of wedlock which, back then was a big taboo for any women to do let alone, an African-American one such as herself who is already looked down upon due to her skin color. Sadie demolishes the gender roles that have been ingrained in society by going into motherhood without a husband therefore, “Putting Ma, Pa, and Maud to shame.” In this poem Brooks describes how Sadie lived her life the way she pleased:
“Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.
She didn’t leave a tangle in.
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks.
In all the Land”
Sadie is evidently unfazed by the ridicule and lives life without missing a single strand, in other words taking life for what it is and loving every minute of it proving that going against society is at times acceptable and even necessary to be truly happy.
While Sadie had encountered many obstacles by going against society, she made the best out of it and lived life to the fullest. Maude on the other hand, played by the rules but did not find fulfillment even though she did what any other respectable daughter would do. In the last stanza, Brooks describes Maud:
“Maud who went to college
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house”
Through all of Maud’s diligence and hardwork in college, she failed to peak her head up from out of her books and fully experience the world and live her life to the fullest.
Maud most likely perpetuated her habit of isolation and obligatory diligence throughout the rest of her life as the poem ends indicating she ended up all alone in her inherited old house. Both sisters as mentioned in the opening paragraph ended up with consequences to bear. Sadie was shunned by society for not making what is considered as more responsible choices with her life, and Maud basically sacrificed her own happiness and content to ensure that of the ones around her i.e. her parents, community, etc. Brooks wrote this poem to serve as an indication that being a black woman at that time was arduous, a change in the mentality of our oppressors (both within the black community, and society in general) would have to come before we could truly be a part of the” free world” without so much judgment and limitations cast upon us. “The ballad of cholate Mabbie” makes a powerful statement on the effect of intra-racial discrimination on black people especially women. In the 1940s light skinned blacks were looked upon with more favor than their darker brothers and sisters. In many different cultures and countries around the world, skin color plays a huge role in the concept of beauty. Lighter skin is often preferable to darker skin. The effects of the African American self-hate toward each other because of one’s skin color is rather eye opening and sad, to say the least. This is a very hot and taboo subject among the African American community. As a culture that came from years of oppression and hatred inflicted by slave owners, forced to think that because of their color, they were inferior, blacks have somehow reverted back to having this sort of mindset which is, in fact, hurting them as a whole. With no thanks to the media and its influence on what is seen as beautiful, Black America is tearing itself apart when it focuses on such a shallow aspect of a person that they can’t control. What a person makes of themselves and all of their aspirations should be what they’re judged on – not their skin color. In this poem, Brooks shows us how early young girls learn the consequences of being dark skinned. Seven year old Mabbie “cut from a chocolate bar” falls in love with Willie Boone, a boy in her school. She’s happy and life feels great as she waits for her crush until he comes out with a light skinned female whom Brooks describes as “a lemon-hued lynx with sound-waves loving her brow”. In the end, Mabbie has lost her innocence as there is no warmth to be found from Willie. In the last stanza: “It was Mabbie alone by the grammar school gates Yet chocolate companions had she: Mabbie on Mabbie with hush in the heart Mabbie on Mabbie to be” Brooks implies that Mabbie will come to terms with the rude awakening of Willie’s choice, and the realization that sometimes the thing we thought would bring us the greatest joy does not. It’s obvious Mabbie was insecure about her dark skin which was the case for a lot of black people in Chicago at the time. Although Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2000, she remains one of the 20th century most-read and honored poets, both for how deftly she put forward issues of the day and for the race of her craft and style. Brooks wrote about what she actually saw and experienced which is what really makes her stand out, she didn’t have to travel around the world like other poets did, she simply wrote about what she saw in her neighborhood. Before she passed, Brooks had a special commitment to young people and sponsored various poetry awards, including the Illinois Poet Laureate Awards, an annual events she developed and ran for over 30 years to honor young writers from Illinois elementary schools and high schools. This project, along with many other programs, contest, and events were personally financed by Brooks in her efforts to give writers opportunities to read publicly their writings, receive monetary awards in recognition of their achievements, and be celebrated for their creative talent.