Gwendolyn Brooks on the South Side

Gwendolyn Brooks was born June 7th, 1917 and grew up in Chicago. She became a poet before marrying another writer, Henry L. Blakely, in 1939. They lived in the South Side of Chicago and were part of a very creative group of people including other writers, painters, and musicians. As an African American woman, she portrayed life and times witnessed outside her own windows. She also discovered the power of the press when John Sengstacke was building the Chicago Defender “into the most noted black paper in the country, where one could regularly read cutting-edge political news, poetry, and the column by Langston Hughes which began in 1942.” I have taken this information from The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks edited by Elizabeth Alexander. Sadly, Mrs. Brooks passed away in 2003 of cancer. She was and still is an influential poet.

http://poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=17315

Thank you for reading, we will meet again tomorrow for an interesting new idea I need your opinion on...