Overview
Gwendolyn Brooks
(1917—2000)
Quick Reference
(1917–2000),
poet reared in Chicago's slums, whose works include A Street in Bronzeville (1945), lyrics; Annie Allen (1949, Pulitzer Prize), a verse narrative about a black girl's life to maturity in World War II, treating her race's isolation as both spiritual and social; The Bean Eaters (1960), about contemporary black life in the U.S.; and Selected Poems (1963). Later volumes of poetry, more militant in tone but continuing to treat the lives and problems of blacks, include In the Mecca (1968), Riot (1969), Family Pictures (1970), and Aloneness (1971). Maud Martha (1953), a novelette about a black woman's romance, is set in Chicago; Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956) is a book for children; and Report from Part One (1972) collects autobiographical pieces.
