A Street In Bronzeville Analysis

The author focuses on the black and feminine experience of the black women in the white society. Her feminine identity as well as her radical identity has molded her vision of the city. More important was Brook’s objective treatment of issues such as identity Crisis and racism. In the collection of A Street in Bronzeville, the characters range from the death-in-life figure of a woman in Obituary for a living lady. The unnamed woman in the poem, a person Brooks knew well. As a child she was decently wild child and as a girl she was interested in a brooch and pink powder and a curl but as a young woman she was not permitted to be with the man, whom she had fallen in spirit, was symbolized by the window in a white dress. Her purity and paleness of spirit, was symbolized by the white dress. It was one of the causes for her to be

(WGB)
Although she bore two illegitimate daughters she shamed her family that she had left her offspring a rich heritage- her fine- toothcomb- so that they would undoubtedly squeeze as much joy out of life as possible. She did not have wealth to leave them, but she left them something perhaps equally valuable. Maud on the other hand who followed the more traditional path and went to college. Like the unnamed woman in “obituary for a living lady” , she has followed the society’s rules, but her life has lacked the vitality and fullness that makes one’s existence meaningful. Both their lives never had any recognition and they never had their own self- identity neither in the domestic nor in their social life.

Self hood of black women:
Brooks probes deeper into the identity and selfhood of black women in the poem The Mother, Brooks depicts a clear view of black woman’s quest or feminine identity and her racial identity. The Mother is a dramatic monologue on abortion a very controversial topic. The mother begins rhetorically: Abortion will not let you forget.(WGB