Gwendolyn Brooks

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Gwendolyn Brooks

• By Michele D.

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Gwendolyn Brooks

• African American poet Gwendolyn Brooks was born
  on June 7, 1917.
• She was born in Topeka, Kansas, later moved to
  Chicago.
• She was very isolated because her parents were
  very strict.
• Her first book was A Street in Bronzeville.
• She was the first African American to get the
  Pulitzer Prize.
• She died on December 3, 2000 at the age of 83

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Awards

• Pulitzer Prize
• National Institute of Arts and Letters
• Lifetime Achievement Awards from National
  Endowment for the Arts and from The National Book
  Foundation.

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Poems

• We Real Cool
• We real cool. We Left school. We
• Lurk late. We Strike straight. We
• Sing sin. We
• Thin gin. We
• Jazz June. We
• Die soon.

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Poems

• The sonnet-ballad
• Oh mother, mother, where is happiness? They took
  my lover's tallness off to war, Left me
  lamenting. Now I cannot guess What I can use an
  empty heart-cup for. He won't be coming back here
  any more. Some day the war will end, but, oh, I
  knew When he went walking grandly out that door
  That my sweet love would have to be untrue. Would
  have to be untrue. Would have to court Coquettish
  death, whose impudent and strange Possessive arms
  and beauty (of a sort) Can make a hard man
  hesitate--and change. And he will be the one to
  stammer, "Yes." Oh mother, mother, where is
  happiness?

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Poetry

• A Street in Bronzeville (1945)
• Annie Allen (1949)
• Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956)
• The Bean Eaters (1960)
• Selected Poems (1963)
• We Real Cool (1966)
• The Wall (1967)
• In the Mecca (1968)
• Family Pictures (1970)    

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PoetryCon.

• Riot (1970)
• Black Steel Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali (1971)
      
• The World of Gwendolyn Brooks (1971)
• Aloneness(1971)
• Aurora (1972)
• Beckonings (1975)
• Black Love (1981)
• To Disembark (1981)
• The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems (1986)
• Blacks (1987)
• Winnie (1988)
• Children Coming Home (1991)

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Web sites

• www.poets.org
• www.poetry.about.com
• http//encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/refarticle.
  aspx?refid761562525

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The End!