This is the neighborhood that Brooks called home and she is still considered one of its most famous residents, earning a plaque on the neighborhood’s walk of fame. The name was popularized by the Chicago Defender, a black newspaper with nationwide circulation.

He noted that African Americans' skin color was closer to bronze than black. James Gentry, a theater editor for the Chicago Bee, gave Bronzeville it’s name.

Known as 'Bronzeville,' the neighborhood was surprisingly small, but at its peak more than 300,000 lived in the narrow, seven-mile strip. According to Brooks’ daughter Nora Brooks Blakely, she believes that her mother’s poems were beloved and timeless “because these little pieces of life are a ‘that’s me!’ for children and a push of a ‘recall’ button for adults.Bronzeville Boys and Girls connects with our thens and our nows.”įrom the 1920s through the 1950s, Chicago's South Side was the center for African-American culture and business. The poems are illustrated by gifted juvenile artist Faith Ringgold with tender loving care and attention to detail of the time and place. There is nothing like the words of Gwendolyn Brooks who brings out the best that humanity has to offer to provide a pick me up for my mood.īronzeville Boys and Girls offers snippets into the daily life of children in the Chicago neighborhood that Brooks called home. During this perusal of her page, I found a volume of poems that Brooks had written for children during the 1950s. For Brooks who over the course of her illustrious career wrote volumes and collections of poems, this task gets trickier with each passing year. I have a tendency to scroll through the Goodreads pages of my favorite authors to see which of their works I haven’t read yet. If there is one poet who has a knack for cheering me up, it is Gwendolyn Brooks.

Gwendolyn brooks poems about race