Читать книгу Freedom Facts and Firsts - Jessie Carney Smith - Страница 38

Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and died December 3, 2000, in Chicago. Her writing can be divided into two parts: her early writings and her later work, which focused more on the social responsibility of both the artist and the artist’s audience. Her early writing was recognized and praised by the establishment. It presented the plight of black America in an acceptable form and language. She won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry during her early career. In 1968 she was named the Poet Laureate of Illinois. She published The Bean Eaters in 1960, which was a more overtly polemical work than her earlier works and one that seemed to anticipate a brewing artistic rebellion.

The 1960s brought a parallel of the Black Power Movement with the Black Arts Movement. There was a call for black art to be written by black artists, about black people, and for a black audience; words were to be weapons and the language was to be accessible. In 1968 Brooks attended the Second Fisk University Writers’ Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, where she heard one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) speak; black poetry was redefined here, and the role of the black artist was discussed. This experience changed her direction so that she emphasized more audience awareness and artistic responsibility in her writing, while her commitment to the plight of black Americans remained firm. Following her experience at the conference, Brooks began to overtly support the black community, consciously deciding to use the term “black.” She published her book of poems In the Mecca (1968). In Chicago, she started a workshop called the Blackstone Rangers, began mentoring young black writers, and supported black publishers. Brooks began publishing her works with publisher Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press, which was committed to publishing young black poets; later, editor and publisher Haki Madhubuti also brought out her works.

Helen R. Houston