Criticism

Hughes, Gertrude Reif. "Making It Really New: Hilda Doolittle, Gwendolyn Brooks, and the Feminist Potential of Modern Poetry." American Quarterly 42, No. 3 (September 1990): 375-401.

Examines the appropriation of modernist literary strategies and anti-heroism in the poetry of Doolittle and Brooks.

Kent, George E. "Aesthetic Values in the Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks." In Black Literature and Humanism, edited by R. Baxter Miller, pp. 75-94. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981.

Discusses elements of existential despair and the social alienation of African-Americans in Brooks's poetry.

Miller, R. Baxter. "'Does Man Love Art?': The Humanistic Aesthetic of Gwendolyn Brooks." In Black Literature and Humanism, edited by R. Baxter Miller, pp. 95-112. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1981.

Explores Brooks's humanistic perspective and universal artistic concerns in her poetry.

Park, Clara Claiborne. "First Fight, Then Fiddle." The Nation (26 September 1987): 308-12.

Provides an overview of Brooks's life and work through review of D. H. Melham's Gwendolyn Brooks: Poetry and the Heroic Voice and Maria K. Mootry and Gary Smith's A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction.

Shaw, Harry B. "Perceptions of Men in the Early Works of Gwendolyn Brooks," in Black American Poets Between Worlds, 1940–1960, edited by R. Baxter Miller, pp. 136-59. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1986.

Examines Brooks's presentation of black male figures in A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maud Martha, and The Bean Eaters.

Interviews

Stavros, George. "An Interview with Gwendolyn Brooks." Contemporary Literature XI, No. 1 (Winter 1970): 1-20.

Brooks discusses contemporary black poetry, her artistic influences, major themes and technical aspects of her work, and changes in her political consciousness and perspective.

Tate, Claudia. "Gwendolyn Brooks." In Black Women Writers at Work, edited by Claudia Tate, pp. 39-48. New York: Continuum, 1985.

Brooks discusses the emergence of her new black consciousness during the late 1960s and her artistic aims and political perspective as a black writer.