1. Presented by Jewel Tutton Gwendolyn Brooks

2. Gwendolyn Brooks Her contemporary works focus in large on racial injustice, poverty and the private struggles of young black women.

3. Brooks’ Poetry A Street in Bronzeville (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1945. Annie Allen (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1949. The Bean Eaters (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1960. In the Time of Detachment, In the Time of Cold, Civil War Centennial Commission of Illinois (Springfield, IL), 1965. In the Mecca (also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1968. For Illinois 1968: A Sesquicentennial Poem, Harper (New York, NY), 1968. Riot (also see below), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1969. Family Pictures (also see below), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1970. Aloneness, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1971. Aurora, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1972.

4. More Poetry: Beckonings, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1975. Primer for Blacks, Black Position Press (Chicago, IL), 1980. To Disembark, Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1981. Black Love, Brooks Press (Chicago, IL), 1982. Mayor Harold Washington; and, Chicago, the I Will City, Brooks Press (Chicago, IL), 1983. The Near-Johannesburg Boy, and Other Poems, David Co. (Chicago, IL), 1987. Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle, David Co. (Chicago, IL), 1988. Winnie, Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1988. Children Coming Home, David Co. (Chicago, IL), 1991. In Montgomery, and Other Poems,Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 2003. The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks, edited by Elizabeth Alexander, Library of America (New York, NY), 2005.

5. Brooks’ Collected Works: Selected Poems, Harper (New York, NY), 1963. (With others) A Portion of That Field: The Centennial of the Burial of Lincoln, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1967. The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (contains A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maud Martha, The Bean Eaters, and In the Mecca; also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1971. (Editor) A Broadside Treasury (poems), Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1971. (Editor) Jump Bad: A New Chicago Anthology, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1971. (With KeorapetseKgositsile, Haki R. Madhubuti, and Dudley Randall) A Capsule Course in Black Poetry Writing, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1975. Young Poet's Primer (writing manual), Brooks Press (Chicago, IL), 1981. Very Young Poets (writing manual), Brooks Press (Chicago, IL), 1983. The Day of the Gwendolyn: A Lecture (sound recording), Library of Congress (Washington, DC), 1986. Blacks (includes A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, The Bean Eaters, Maud Martha, A Catch of Shy Fish, Riot, In the Mecca, and most of Family Pictures), David Co. (Chicago, IL), 1987. The Gwendolyn Brooks Library, Moonbeam Publications, 1991.

6. Brooks’ Other Work’s: Maud Martha (novel; also see below), Harper (New York, NY), 1953. Bronzeville Boys and Girls (poems; for children), Harper (New York, NY), 1956, newly illustrated edition, Amistad/ HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2007. Report from Part One: An Autobiography, Broadside Press (Highland Park, MI), 1972. The Tiger Who Wore White Gloves: Or You Are What You Are (for children), Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1974, reissued, 1987. Report from Part Two (autobiography), Third World Press (Chicago, IL), 1996. Gwendolyn Brooks and Working Writers, edited by Jacqueline Imani Bryant, Third World Press (Chicago, IL),2007.

7. Brooks’ Biggest Honor The first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry!

8. What the critics say… Her works does not appear on the syllabi of most American literature courses Her work has always touched at some level on the problems of blacks in America Few, if any, of her female characters are able to free themselves from the web of poverty and racism that threatens to strangle their lives

9. Works Cited: Baker, Houston A. Jr., The Achievement of Gwendolyn Brooks, in CLA Journal, Vol. XVI, No. 1, September, 1972 Lattin, Patricia H. and Lattin, Vernon, “Dual Visionin Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Maud Martha, in Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, Vol. XXV, No. 4 Summer, 1984, pp. 180-88. Lee, Don L. The Achievement of Gwendolyn Brooks, in The Black Scholar, Vol. 3, No. 10, Summer, 1972, pp. 3241. R. Baxter Miller, "'Define . . . the Whirlwind': Gwendolyn Brooks' Epic Sign for a Generation," in Black American Poets Between Worlds, 1940-1960, edited by R. Baxter Miller, University of Tennessee Press, 1986, pp. 160-73. Reproduced by permission. Gary Smith, Gwendolyn Brooks's 'A Street in Bronzeville', the Harlem Renaissance and the Mythologies of Black Women, in MELUS, Vol. 10, No. 3, Fall, 1983, pp. 33-46. Reproduced by permission