Brooks, Gwendolyn (Vol. 5) - Brooks, Gwendolyn 1917–
Brooks, Gwendolyn 1917–
A Black American novelist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks is one of America's most highly regarded contemporary writers. (See also Contemporary Authors, Vols. 1-4, rev. ed.)
Gwendolyn Brooks [is] far more a poet than a Negro [writing solely for the sake of expressing racial experiences]; for she is totally a poet, totally dedicated to her craft. She exercises, customarily, a greater degree of artistic control than any other American Negro writer. Not even Ralph Ellison has attained her level of objective and exquisite detachment. At least one Negro, it is worth noting, in the postwar United States … has been able to transcend the assertedly "universal" plight of her race. She is no more professionally black than T. S. Eliot (whose manner and skills she recalls), and should really be read and judged in the colorless company of his followers.
Of all Negro practitioners, only LeRoi Jones...
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