Chronology
June 7, 1917 Gwendolyn Brooks is born to David and Keziah Brooks in
Topeka, Kansas five weeks later she moves to Chicago
1930 Publishes her first poem “Eventide" in American Childhood Magazine
at the age of thirteen
1934 Graduates from Englewood High School
1934 Brooks becomes a member of the staff of the Chicago Defender has
published almost one hundred of her poems in a weekly poetry column
1936 Graduates from Wilson Junior College
1938 Joins the NAAPC’s Youth Council where she met peers who accepted
her and valued her talents
1939 Marries fellow writer Henry L. Blakely
1940 First child Henry L. Blakey III. is born
1943 Wins the Midwestern Writers Conference Poetry Award
1945 Brooks publishes her first anthology of poetry, “A Street in Bronzeville”
1949 Publishes her second volume of verse, “Annie Allen”
1950 First African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize
1951 Second child Nora is born
1953 Moves from the crowded apartment to a home on the South Side of
Chicago
1956 Writes a collection of children’s poems called, “Bronzeville Boys
and Girls”
1962 John F. Kennedy invites her to read at the Library of Congress
poetry festival
1963 Compiles a collection of her finest verse called, “Selected Poems.”
1963 Hired at first teaching job at Columbia College in Chicago
1964 Receives her first honorary degree from Columbia College
1967 Decides to promote black publishing houses
1968 Brooks succeeded Carl Sandburg as the poet laureate of Illinois
1969 Divorces Henry L. Blakely
1971 Travels to Kenya and Tanzania in which she got the inspiration
for “African Fragment”
1973 Reunites with Henry L. Blakely
1989 She received a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment
of the Arts
1994 Lifetime achievement from the National Book Foundation and was
selected by the National Endowment of the Humanities to be its Jefferson
Lecturer
1995 Won the National Medal of Arts
December 3, 2000 Gwendolyn Brooks Dies of Cancer in her home
at the age of 83
In her autobiography Report from Part One Gwendolyn writes, “The Black woman must remember, through all the prattle about walking or not walking three or twelve steps behind or ahead of ‘her’ male, that, sweet as sex may be, she cannot endlessly brood on Black Man’s blondes, blues, blunders. She is a person in the world—with wrongs to right, stupidities to outwit, with her man when possible, on her own when not. And she is also here to enjoy. She will be here, like any other, once only. Therefore she must, in the midst of tragedy and hatred and neglect, mightily enjoy the readily enjoyable: sunshine and pets and children and conversation and games and travel (tiny or large) and books and walks and chocolate cake.”
List of Works
A Street in Bronzeville (1945)
Annie Allen (1949)
Maud Martha (1953)
Bronzeville Girls and Boys (1956)
The Bean Eaters (1960)
Selected Poems (1963)
We Real Cool (1966)
For Illinois 1968: A Sesquicentennial Poem (1968)
In the Mecca (1968)
Riot (1969)
Family Pictures (1970)
The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (1971)
Aloneness (1971)
Black Steel: Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali (1971)
A Broadside Treasury (1971)
Jump Bad. (1971)
Report From Part One: An Autobiography (1972)
Aurora (1972)
The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves, or What You Really Are, You Really
Are (1974)
Beckonings (1975)
A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing (1975)
Primer for Blacks (1980)
Young Poet’s Primer (1981)
To Disembark (1981)
Black Love (1981)
Very Young Poets (1983)
The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems (1986)
Blacks (1987)
Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle (1988)
Winnie (1988)
Children Coming Home (1991)
Report From Part Two (1996)
Works Cited
· Showalter, Elaine. Modern American Women Writers.
New York: Macmillan, 1991.
· Brooks, Gwendolyn. Report From Part One. Detroit:
Broadside Press, 1972.
Gwendolyn Brooks Links
· http://www.biography.com/cgi-bin/biomain.cgi
· http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brooks/life.htm
· http://www.poets.org/poems/poems.cfm?prmID=1233
(Hear Gwendolyn Brooks read one of her poems “We Real Cool”