The Poetry Of Gwendolyn Brooks

Linda Pastan was a great poet while also a wife and mother. Pastan started sending her work to The New Yorker at age twelve (Potvin par. 6). Later, she went to college and got married. Pastan stated in an interview that she stopped writing for about ten years, because she could not be the perfect wife and mother that she was expected to be and also commit herself to her poetry (Brown, 3). She considers herself “a product of the ‘50s – what I called the perfectly polished floor syndrome.

Maya Angelou has celebrated her diversity in life and work through poetry using clear repetition and symbolism. The United States first female African American Poet Laureate was Maya Angelou("Poetry Foundation" 2018). She was born on April 4,1928 in St. Louis Missouri. However, in her early life Maya had extreme family problems ("Maya Angelou" 2018). Her parents got a divorce while she was very young, she was back and forth from home to home ("Maya Angelou" 2018).

The Bluest Eye: Beauty People often say that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” in The Bluest Eye this takes a new meaning. The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison 's first novel published in 1970. Set in the author 's hometown in Lorrain, Ohio, it narrates the story of a black little girl named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for blue eyes like the ones her idol Shirley Temple has, because that way she will be beautiful and loved. Throughout the novel Toni Morrison takes us on Pecola 's journey to self-destruction because she lives in world that doesn 't find her beautiful or even worth to be looked at.

Poet Biography Rita Dove is an African American poet born on August 28,1952 in Akron, Ohio, who is married to a German writer, Fred Viebahn whom she had met in college, and a loving mother to Aviva Dove- Viebahn. (Biography.com Editors, "Rita Dove") Dove was raised in a well

Louise Erdrich was the child of Ralph Louis and Rita Joanne who had both affiliated with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Her writing abilities and storytelling came from her family. Around eight years old, everybody in her family from her grandparents to her parents told her stories of how it had been on the Indian reservation during The Great Depression. Her father would mainly tell her stories of his relatives and the previous towns he used to live in.

Maya Angelou recalls the first seventeen years of her life, discussing her unsettling childhood in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya and Bailey were sent from California to the segregated South to live with their grandmother, Momma. At the age of eight, Maya went to stay with her mother in St. Louis, where she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya confronts these traumatic events of her childhood and explores the evolution of her own strong identity. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement, caused by these incidents of sexual abuse, are mediated through her love for literature.

Madonna louise ciccone , better known as Madonna is an american singer, songwriter , actress ,and a business-woman. Madonna was born on the 15 of august 1958 in Bay city , Michigan. Madonna grew in a very strict territory.when she reached the age of six , her mother died because of breast cancer. When that happened Madonna struggled with her family. Madonna had to live with her relatives, until her father married after two years.

Hunger, Katie SR “The Fourth of July” Background Audre Lorde was a New York born, self described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” A lot of her work addressed issues with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Not only did Lorde write a lot of poetry, but from a young age she replied to people by quoting poetry that she had memorized. Lorde’s nickname is “Gamba Adisa” which means “Warrior: she who makes her meaning clear.” She took the name in an African naming ceremony.

Audre Lorde: Poet, Lesbian, Activist, Mother. Although the majority of Lorde’s poetry and essays focus on her sexuality and race there is a poem, published in Coal, 1976, that seems to stand out among her inner darkness. Now That I Am Forever With Child is a shining beacon to Lorde’s first full pregnancy, and you can feel the joy and love in her words as you read each line. In comparison to her poem Coal, the books namesake, there are many contrasting styles in word choice, imagery, meaning and much more.

Angelou was, “Born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1928 abandoned by both her parents when they divorced ” (Ramey 1). Since her parents got a divorce when she was a baby, this could be one more reason to believe in heaven and God. She grow up in the 1930s, and as an adult, “She has been at various times in her life a streetcar conductor, Creole cook, madam, prostitute, junkie, singer, actress, and civil-rights activist” (Ramey 1). Being well rounded like this inspired her to write poems like “Preacher, Don’t Send Me”. Angelou experience in the south was racially divided for example she explains, “ the racial separation of the town, and the innumerable incidents of denigration which made life in the south an abomination against God and man” (Cudjoe 28).

She wrote “Our Florence Nightingale is Sally Tompkins.” Sally Tompkins was a local hero in Richmond, she kept her hospital open two months after them war. Once the hospital was closed, Sally visited her family members around Virginia. She volunteered to be a Sunday school teacher at the St. James Episcopal Church, she was an active member there for a chunk of her life. Sally died in July 26, 1961 of natural causes, she died in the Confederate Woman’s Home in Richmond and she was burried with military honors.

During the 1890s, Breedlove began to suffer from a scalp ailment called alopecia, which causes hair loss. At first she tried existing hair products to relieve her problem, before beginning to develop her own remedies. She sold her homemade products directly to black women, using a personal approach that helped win her customers and eventually a fleet of loyal saleswomen. Breedlove met her second husband Charles J. Walker, who worked in advertising and would later help promote her hair care business.

Mary was born August 5, 1861 in Belleville,IL to Henry and Lavinia Richmond. She was raised by her grandmother and two aunts in Baltimore, MD after her parents died. She grew up around racial problems, suffrage, social, and political beliefs. Because she grew up around those things she started becoming a critical thinker and social activism. Richmond was home schooled because her grandmother and aunts were not familiar with the traditional education system until the age of eleven when she entered public school.

Flannery O 'Connor was born in Savannah Georgia on March 25, 1925, as an only child. Her mother had to assume most of the responsibility of raising Flannery because her father died of lupus when she was fifteen. Flannery attended the Georgia State College for Women, and then went to the State University in Iowa where she received her master in Fine Arts (Gooch). Flannery’s life was very short, died at the age of 39, as she struggled with lupus, the same incurable disease that claimed the life of her father. O’Conner family was devoutly Catholic, which would influence her work and her outlook in life a great deal.

Ella Fitzgerald By Christopher Parrish Early Life Ella’s love for music came at a young age. Ella was born on April 15.She was born in Newport,news Virginia. Her father, William, and mother, Temperance (Tempie), parted ways shortly after her birth.