Gwendolyn Brooks Maud Martha

Symbolising some of the author's most provocative writing, this novel captures the essence of Black life, and recognises the beauty and strength that lies within each of us.

The life of a young black woman growing up in Chicago is a constant effort to find status in an unsympathetic environment.

The life of a young black woman growing up in Chicago is a constant effort to find status in an unsympathetic environment.

Original poetry, visual art, and essays commemorating the 100th birthday of Chicago poet and cultural philanthropist Gwendolyn Brooks.

In September 1953, legendary poet Gwendolyn Brooks introduced the reading world to Maud Martha, a complex urban black heroine, in her only published novel of the same name in her long and celebrated literary career. By the time the novel was published, indeed, Brooks had secured two Guggenheim Fellowships (1946,1947), and had already become the first black to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (Annie Allen, 1950). But the success of two other major black literary works by Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) and Richard Wright (The Outsider) would overshadow the work initially entitled 'American Family Brown'. Still, the work would prove to be a critical one for Brooks enthusiasts, who followed the poet's literary career. In her introduction to this collection of literary criticism that is rooted in a deep reverence, love and respect for the honourable Ms Brooks, Jacqueline Bryant explains that, though Brooks had certainly captured national attention and had published two critically acclaimed volumes of poetry by this time (Annie Allen and A Street in Bronzeville), Maud Martha was introduced to some great acclaim in Chicago; yet national critical reception was mixed.Bryant cites as one of the goals of this collection increased attention to the too long eclipsed work.

This was the Pulitzer Prize-winner's first new collection of poetry after a gap of nearly ten years. "I was to be a Watchful Eye; a Tuned Ear; a Super-reporter," Brooks said. "I began writing about whatever I thought I knew, whatever I experienced." What she knew and experienced in those years resulted in poetry charged with a new power and urgency. The book takes its title from a long narrative poem set in a huge decayed apartment house in Chicago's black ghetto, a building called the Mecca. A tragedy in the Mecca gives rise to Brooks' extraordinary poetic evocation of its dense personal miseries and sense of life. Nine shorter poems follow, and these too, in large part, have their source in contemporary figures and circumstances: Medgar Evers and Malcolm X, "the Blackstone Rangers gang," the astonishing prideful mural painted on a ghetto wall one summer. The universality that transcends the immediate event, and is the mark of poetic sensibility, distinguishes all the poetry here. Gwendolyn Brooks' stature as a poet who "induces almost unbearable excitement"--As Phyllis McGinley described her--is here enriched by the new dimensions her work encompasses.--Adapted from book jacket.

Presents a collection of the author's poetry and prose.