A landmark poet, novelist, and autobiographer, Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks is treasured for an abiding humanity strongly grounded on the experiences of wife and mother. A symbol of commitment to her race, she became the first black American to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, American Academy of the Arts and Letters Grant in literature, and the Pulitzer Prize. She is immersed in the rhythms, themes, and language of the black American. She committed her art to the commonalities and hardships of living in a racist society.
Brooks is a native of Topeka, Kansas, born on June 7, 1917, the eldest of three children. Rooted in Chicago's South Side, she kept detailed notebooks from age six, because she was determined to become a spokesperson for black people.
Brooks' education at Hyde Park Branch, Wendell Phillips High, and Englewood High was uninspiring, primarily because it presented Brooks no black role models among teachers and staff and few nonwhite peers. Withdrawn, she read from the foremost white authors of the day — T. S. Eliot, e. e. cummings, William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, John Crowe Ransom, and Wallace Stevens — and began learning the intricacies of sonnet, alliteration, and wit. At age 13, certain she would one day be a member of America's best, she buried a sheaf of verse in the backyard for later discovery. Three years later, her mother escorted her to readings of James Weldon Johnson and Langston Hughes. Johnson had little to say, but Hughes eagerly nudged Brooks toward a career in poetry.
