by Jerrie Lynn South-DeRose

Created on: February 07, 2009

Important Women in African-American History: Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet, author, lecturer, Pulitzer Prize Winner and Illinois Poet Laureate

When I was taking college coursework in Creative Writing for my minor, in 1988, one of the first required classes was in reading, writing, and analyzing poetry. The instructor, Mrs. Linda Kruckenburg, who sadly is now deceased, had spent an entire summer after her first two semesters of college, during the mid sixties, working in a Chicago ghetto. Wanting us to have not only a comprehensive understanding of the historic value of poetry, she wanted us to read and study some of the less publicized poets. As part of that coursework, Professor Kruckenburg selected the

African American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, for that study. Raw and emotional, and invocative of the times, Ms. Brookes poetry touched me, and some of the other students, in ways that we had never been touched before and gave us a much more comprehensive picture of the lives of African American citizens in society. As a student, I was given this wonderful opportunity to gain insight into the lives of ordinary African Americans and their struggles against the effects of poverty and racism through poetry and literature.

There was so much more that we gained beyond the reading and analyzing of Gwendolyn Brooks poetic works. The female students (of which I was one), especially, were made privy to the struggles of Ms. Brooks not only as an African American, but as an African American woman which was a dual curse for the poet, who passed away from cancer in 2000, at the age of eighty-three. Some of her earlier writing reflected that struggle. Gwendolyn Brooks autobiographical novel titled Maud Martha was published in 1953 and examined racism, sexism, and classism through the eyes of an African American woman just before, during, and after World War II. The connection here for all Americans, especially women, is the information on sexism and classism which, throughout history, has affected those with a low income or who are on public assistance more than any other group and a large number of women, especially African American women.

To give us a better understanding of African American life in urban America, Professor Kruckenburg had us read Brook's epic poem, Mecca, based on the author's time spent working in the Mecca Apartment Building and tenement in Chicago, and which made us privy to the poverty, unfulfilled dreams, and violence that are overriding themes throughout the

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