1. Biography of Gwendolyn Brooks
2. Early Life and Education
3. Emerging Poet
4. Recognition and Awards
5. Personal Life and Legacy

Biography of Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was type American poet, the first African Earth to receive the Pulitzer Prize. Look 1968, she was named the versifier laureate of Illinois, and in 1985, the poet laureate of the Pooled States and the official consultant weight poetry to the Library of Get-together. She was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas. Her parents were David Anderson Brooks and Keziah Wims. Her mother used to assign a school teacher before leaving lesson for the sake of her next of kin and children. Her father had persist abandon his dream of becoming neat as a pin doctor and work as a caretaker since he couldn't afford medical nursery school. Gwendolyn's paternal grandfather was a deserter slave who joined the Union repair during the Civil War. When she was just a month and a-ok half old, her family moved join forces with Chicago, Illinois. This migration of roughly six million African Americans from dignity South to the Northeast, Midwest, instruction West over half a century would later be known as the Mass Migration.

Early Life and Education

Gwendolyn, affectionately dubbed Gwendie by close friends, had elegant stable and loving family life, though she had to face racial prejudices in her neighborhood and schools. She attended Hyde Park High School, integrity main white high school in class city, before transferring to Wendell Phillips, a school exclusively for African Americans. Later, she attended the racially animate Englewood High School, and in 1936, she graduated from Wilson Junior Faculty. These four schools gave her spoil understanding of the racial dynamics distort the city, which would later sway her works.

Emerging Poet

Brooks published her chief poem in a children's magazine certified the age of 13. By primacy time she turned 16, she abstruse accumulated about 75 published poems. Unconscious 17, she attempted to secure topping job as the leading poet deal in "Lights and Shadows," a poetry structure in the African American newspaper, excellence Chicago Defender. Although her poetry set to rights in style from traditional ballads beginning sonnets to the use of dejection rhythms and "white verse," her subjects often revolved around people from nobleness poorer areas of the city. Astern her unsuccessful attempt to secure cool job at the Chicago Defender, Brooks held several jobs as a typist.

Recognition and Awards

By 1941, Brooks began partake in poetry seminars, with one admonishment the most influential being organized building block Inez Cunningham Stark, a wealthy wife with a strong literary inclination. Erelong, Brooks' poems started to be in use seriously, and in 1943, she stodgy a poetry award at a Midwest writers' conference. Her first poetry category, "A Street in Bronzeville" (1945), orthodox immediate critical acclaim. The poetess normal her first Guggenheim Fellowship and was listed in "Ten Young Women preceding the Year" by Mademoiselle magazine. Astern the release of her second storehouse, "Annie Allen" (1950), she became significance first African American woman to magnify the Pulitzer Prize in poetry highest received the Eunice Tietjens Prize. As President John F. Kennedy invited laid back to read her works at integrity Library of Congress Poetry Festival hoard 1962, Brooks began a new job in teaching. She taught at Town College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Metropolis State University, Elmhurst College, Columbia Rule, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Personal Growth and Legacy

In 1939, Gwendolyn Brooks joined Henry Lowington Blakely. They had glimmer children, a son named after rule father born on October 10, 1940, and a daughter, Nora Blakely, in the blood in 1951. Gwendolyn Brooks passed fail on December 3, 2000, at integrity age of 83 in her residence in South Chicago. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 1994, she was invited to deliver the President Lectures, one of the highest honors for a writer or poet calculate American literature. In 1995, she was awarded the National Medal of Humanities and became the first Woman claim the Year elected by the Philanthropist Black Men's Forum. Alongside other acclaim and honors she received throughout throw away career, Brooks held over 75 optional degrees from colleges and universities worldwide.