Gwendolyn Brooks

GWENDOLINE BROOKS BIOGRAPHY (RESEARCH)

Gwendolyn Brooks, the daughter of David Anderson Brooks, the son of a runaway slave, and of Keziah Corinne (Wims) Brooks, was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas.  Her parents were living in Chicago, but her mother had decided that she wanted her baby to be born at her mother’s home.
 At the age of one month, Gwendolyn Brooks was brought home toChicago.  And then the family moved to their permanent residence on Champlin Avenue when Gwendolyn was four years old.
At the age of seven Gwendolyn had began rhyming and by the time she was thirteen she had her first poem published in “American Childhood”, a well-known magazine of the time.
In 1932, she entered Hyde Park High School, which was predominantly white.  Later she attended WendellPhillips High School, which was an all-black school.  Then it was on to Englewood High School, which was an integrated institution.
As a student, she met the poets James Weldon Johnson-who suggested that she read some of the modern poetry works of T.S. Elliot and E.E. Cummings.  And Langston Hughes, who encouraged her in her literary ambitions, and who offered Gwendolyn more tangible assistanceearly in her career when he wrote about her several times in his newspaper column.
At the age of seventeen Gwendolyn began submitting her work to “Lights and Shadows”, the poetry column of the “Chicago Defender”, an African-American newspaper.  During this same period, she also attended Wilson Junior College, from where she graduated in 1936.
After publishing more than seventy-five poems, andfailing to obtain a position with the Chicago Defender, she began to work a series of typing jobs.
In 1937, when Brooks was twenty, her work appeared in two anthologies.  And then in 1939, on September 17, she married Henry Blakely II, whom she had met the previous year.
In 1940, Gwendolyn and Henry II became the proud parents, of a son who they named Henry Blakely III.   
 In 1941, Gwendolynmade a crucial step in her poetic development, when she and her husband both enrolled in Inez Cunningham Stark’s poetry workshop.  The students were required to read modern poets and to produce poetic exercises that were held to, and judged by, the strictest standards.
Two years later, in 1943, Gwendolyn began to achieve recognition in when she won an award at the Midwestern Writer’s Conference. She would later receive three more awards from the same organization over the next two years.
In 1945, the year her first book “A Street In Bronzeville”, Brooks’ first collection of poetry, which contained both “Southeast Corner” and “The Mother” appeared, “Mademoiselle” selected her as one of its “Ten Young Women of the Year.”
In 1946, she won a $1,000 award from the American Academy of Artsand Letters, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, which was renewed the following year.  Gwendolyn was fully launched as a serious writer, and she had not yet reached the age of thirty.
In 1949, Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for her second book of poetry, “Annie Allen”, which certified and established her as the first time African-American poet to have received this prestigious award.  Shereceived the award for her candid and compassionate poetry that delved into poverty, racism and drugs among black people. 
In 1951, two years later the Brooks would welcome the birth of a daughter named Nora Brooks Blakely. 
Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems, had more than 20 books published, and had been Illinois’ poet laureate since 1968.  She would continue to write toward the end of herlife.
She was world renowned for promoting an understanding of black culture through her poetry, while at the same time suggesting inclusiveness is the key to harmony.
In Gwendolyn’s own words she stated:
“I believe that we should all know each other, we human carriers of so many pleasurable differences.” “To not know is to doubt, to shrink from, sidestep or destroy.”
In her entry in "Who's...