This Week in Literary History: Happy Birthday to Gwendolyn Brooks!

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THIS WEEK IN

JUNE 6 — JUNE 12

Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black writer to win a Pulitzer Prize, is born

On June 7, 1917, Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, but soon moved with her family to Chicago. In her long lifetime, she would become one of the most influential and widely read American poets of her generation. She published her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, in 1945, to enthusiastic acclaim, but it was for her second, 1949’s Annie Allen, that she won the Pulitzer Prize—the first Black writer to do so. She also served as the poet laureate of Illinois, and was the first Black woman to work as the poetry consultant to the Library of Congress. She’s even on a stamp! Most importantly—she was kind: a generous literary citizen and philanthropist, who was always ready to support a fellow writer in need.

Brooks needs no introduction or explanatory text, but just in case: You may know her best as the author of “We Real Cool,” one of the most anthologized poems in modern literature, or perhaps as the author of “Vern,” one of the best dog poems in modern literature. She has inspired everyone from Gillian Flynn to Margo Jefferson to Walter Mosley to Keith S. Wilson to Aija Mayrock. Schools all over the country are named after her; Chicago’s Gwendolyn Brooks Park has the only public sculpture of a Black woman in the city. In 2013, Northwestern University professor Reginald Gibbons began celebrating June 7 as Brooksday; academics, poets, and fans gather to celebrate Brooks’ life and work.

“Because her poems and fiction are so captivating and faithful to the Black experience, consequently the human experience, Gwendolyn Brooks will continue to be read and be alive,” wrote Angela Jackson. “Gwendolyn Brooks is immortal because she impacts and influences other poets and writers and others who influence poets and writers and others. Her genius and personality increase exponentially. Teachers taught students who in turn taught students about her work. ‘We Real Cool’ . . . is a part of the American heart.”

Brooks died in 2000, but her work—and her alter ego, Maud Martha—will always be with us.

MORE ON GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Inventing a New Poetic Form to Honor Gwendolyn Brooks

The 32 Most Iconic Poems in the English Language

On Gwendolyn Brooks and Disappearing Black Girls

ESSENTIAL WISDOM

“Most of us do not feel cozy with art, that it’s not a thing you easily and chummily throw your arms around, that it’s not a huggable thing . . . We visit it, we pay special, precise little calls on it. But those of us who have not grown up with or to it perhaps squirm a little in its presence. We feel that something is required of us that perhaps we aren’t altogether able to give. And it’s just a way of saying, ‘Art hurts.’ Art is not an old shoe; it’s something that you have to work in the presence of. It urges voyages. You just can’t stay in your comfortable old grooves. You have to extend yourself. And it’s easier to stay at home and drink beer.”

—GWENDOLYN BROOKS
in a 1970 interview with George Stavros

In other (old)

news this week

A little show called Sex and the City, based on Candace Bushnell’s book of the same name—and featuring the most realistic writer in TV history—premieres on HBO (June 6, 1998) • The first English translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is published in New York (June 7, 1862) • George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (which you should probably re-read) is published; 72 years later, it dominates the internet (June 8, 1949) • The first copyright entry in the US, for John Barry’s The Philadelphia Spelling Book is registered in Pennsylvania (June 8, 1790) • Leo Tolstoy leaves for a pilgrimage to a monastery, disguised as a peasant (June 10, 1881) • Anne Frank gets a diary for her birthday (June 12, 1942)

IMPORTANT: 50 LITERARY CAMEOS IN 90s MOVIES

CELEBRATE GEORGE ORWELL’S BIRTHDAY BY READING HIS (SCATHING) 1940 REVIEW OF MEIN KAMPF

THE WEIRDOS OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE

“Artistic style is only a means to an end, and the more styles you have, the better. To get trapped in a style is to lose all flexibility. If you have only one style, then you’re going to do the same book over and over, which is pretty dull. Lots of styles permit you to walk in and out of books. So, develop a fine style, a fat style, and fairly slim style, and a really rough style.”