Gwendolyn Brooks

  

Her heart so gentle,

but words pierce through readers' souls,

proud being kind and fair.

(Photo by npr.org)

10 Fun Facts on Gwendolyn Brooks:

1. She was an author, poet, and teacher.
2. She was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved to Chicago weeks after her birth.
3. At the age of 17, she was publishing poems for the newspaper, Chicago Defender.
4. The first African American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her poetry book titled "Annie Allen" in 1949.
5. She was well known for her kindness around town selflessly helping everyone that she could with their bills, writing, and more.
6. She organized her prize money to create poetry prizes for other writers in the community who were in need of funding for a place and supplies to write. 
7. Her passions include reading, writing, politics, and poetry when it came to creating her works and socializing.
8. She was the first Black woman to be the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.
9. She was named the Poet Laureate of the state of Illinois.
10. Many of her poems written from the 1960s and later were based on the civil rights movement.

(Info from Poetryfoundation.org, Wikipedia.org, & Poets.org)

One of her famous free verse poems encourage Black girls and women to wear their hair naturally and exercising pride in being Black:

"To Those Of My Sisters
Who Kept Their Naturals"

-- never to look a hot comb in the teeth

by Gwendolyn Brooks

 

Sisters!

I love you.
Because you love you.
Because you are erect.
Because you are also bent.
In season, stern, kind.
Crisp, soft-in season.
And you withhold.
And you extend.
And you Step out.
And you go back.
And you extend again.

Your eyes, loud-soft, with crying and with smiles,
are older than a million years,
And they are young.
You reach, in season.
And All
below the rich rouch right time of your hair.

You have not bought Blondine.
You have not hailed the hot-comb recently.
You never worshipped Marilyn Monroe.
You say: Farrah's hair is hers.
You have not wanted to be white.
Nor have you testified to adoration of that state
with the advertisement of imitation
(never successful because the hot-comb is laughing too.)

But oh the rough dark Other music!
the Real,
the Right.
The natural Respect of Self and Seal!

Sisters!

Your hair is Celebration in the world!

(Poem cited from http://www.endarkenment.com/hair/poetry/brooks.htm)