Hidden Figures: Gwendolyn Brooks #BlackHERstoryMonth 22/28 (Patreon)

Hidden Figures: Gwendolyn Brooks #BlackHERstoryMonth 22/28

If you enjoy my work, please consider supporting! CashApp: $SerenSensei Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seren_sensei Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. She was the author of more than 20 poetry collections, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, making her the first Black American to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Born in 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, when she was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration. Brooks began writing at an early age and her mother encouraged her; she published her first poem in a children's magazine when she was 13 years old. By the age of 16, she had already written and published approximately 75 poems, and at 17, she started submitting her work to the poetry column of the Chicago Defender. By the time she had graduated from high school in 1935, she was a regular contributor to The Chicago Defender and had published almost one hundred of her poems in the column. She graduated in 1936 from a two-year program at Wilson Junior College, and worked as a typist to support herself while she pursued her career. She published more poems while she attended Wilson Junior College, and in her early years, she received encouragement from James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright and Langston Hughes. In 1944, two of her poems were published in Poetry magazine's November issue. Brooks' published her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville in 1945, earning instant critical acclaim for its authentic and textured portraits of life in the Chicago neighborhood of Bronzeville. Brooks' second book of poetry, Annie Allen (1949), was awarded the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, making her the first Black American to receive a Pulitzer. In 1967, Brooks attended the Second Black Writers' Conference at Nashville's Fisk University, where she was exposed to Black cultural nationalism and the Black Arts movement. Brooks's experience at the conference inspired much of her creative output and career from then on; becoming one of the more visible spokespersons for "the Black aesthetic,” she began to refuse major publishing houses in favor of smaller, exclusively Black publishers. Her poems also became less structured, moving away from an established mainstream - ie white - literary format to more improvisational free verse with jazz- and BAVE-inspired dialects. In 1968, Brooks was appointed poet laureate of Illinois, a role she held until her death in 2000. As laureate, Brooks was active in Illinois communities, developing and organizing poetry workshops and activities in many poor Black areas of the state and in Chicago, where especially the youth had never been exposed to poetry. In 1976, she became the first Black American woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was also named the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress for the 1985–86 term. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. During her career, Brooks taught at such schools as Columbia College in Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia University, and the City College of New York. She also released two autobiographical mixed media projects: Report From Part One, which included reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes and came out in 1972, and Report From Part Two, which was published in 1995. Gwendolyn Brooks died at her Chicago home on December 3, 2000. #HiddenFigures #GwendolynBrooks ****************** Merchandise! MAKE SURE U GETTA SHIRT!! https://www.teepublic.com/user/sssseren https://www.shophouseof950.com/embroidery-tees/theblackamericans https://www.shophouseof950.com/embroidery-tees/dacs?rq=d.a.c.s Follow me on social media! Instagram: @sensei_aishitemasu Personal Tumblr: http://sensei-aishitemasu.tumblr.com Tumblr for my work: https://sssseren.tumblr.com GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/tc5wh7q ****************** Did you know I wrote a book? ☺️ 'So, About That... A Year of Contemporary Essays on Race and Pop Culture' Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/About-That-Contemporary-Essays-Culture-ebook/dp/B013V0CHK6 Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B013V0CHK6 Digital download (e-book): https://gumroad.com/l/IkUa ****************** Links: Frost? Williams? No, Gwendolyn Brooks: https://www.pulitzer.org/article/frost-williams-no-gwendolyn-brooks Gwendolyn Brooks: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poets-laureate/item/n50041281/gwendolyn-brooks/ Gwendolyn Brooks: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/dec/07/guardianobituaries Illinois Poet Laureate: https://web.archive.org/web/20150228221913/http://www.illinois.gov/poetlaureate/Pages/brooks.aspx Remembering The Great Poet Gwendolyn Brooks At 100: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/05/29/530081834/remembering-the-great-poet-gwendolyn-brooks-at-100