Gwendolyn Brooks Biography

Gwendolyn Brooks is best known for her lyrical style of urban poetry, such as in “We Real Cool,” a poem about a subject she knew very well: the problems of African American youths in the mid-twentieth century.

Born in 1917, Brooks spent most of her life in Chicago, Illinois. Her father was the son of a runaway slave, and her mother was a teacher. Her parents recognized her writing talent early on and encouraged her work. In high school, Brooks’ mother took her to meet the famous Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Inspired by his advice, Brooks was soon publishing her own poetry. By the age of seventeen, she had more than one hundred poems in print, and her subject matter was frequently the difficulties of growing up black and impoverished in America. Brooks died in 2000, a celebrated voice of literature and poetry.

Facts and Trivia

• Gwendolyn Brook’s high school life helped her gain the racial perspective for which she is famous. She attended three different schools as a teen—one predominately white, one all black, and a third that was integrated.
• Brooks was the first African American, male or female, to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950). Her other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and the coveted position of Jefferson Lecturer, the highest honor the government bestows on authors via the National Endowment for the Arts.
• Her poem “We Real Cool” is among the most anthologized of any American poems. Other popular and critically acclaimed works include “The Bean Eaters” and “The Crazy Woman.”
• President John F. Kennedy asked Brooks to read her work at the Poetry Festival in 1962.
• Brooks was one of the champions of the “black aesthetic,” a movement in the 1960s to promote and encourage black separatism.