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Gwendolyn BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Brooks’s “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” explores racial violence and complicity; it considers, through the eyes of a white woman, the interconnected issues of gender relations, sexuality, southern culture, violence, and racism. “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is Brooks’s response to the brutal 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy who spoke to a married white woman in Mississippi and subsequently lost his life at the hands of white men from the community. (For a thorough explanation of Emmett Till’s murder, as well as the socio-political ramifications, see the “Chapter 1 | The Murder of Emmett Till” video clip from the PBS documentary in the Further Reading section of this guide.) Brooks uses archetypal fantasy characters and literary allusions to romance and ballads in order to demonstrate the absurdity of the white speaker’s flawed worldview. “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters” is built upon Brooks’s allusion to the literary ballad form, and that allusion is central to the poem’s conceit. The ironic comparison between the fantastical characters of the ballad and the realities of Emmett Till’s brutal murder highlight, with nuance, the speaker’s complicity in racial violence, as well as her diminished role in patriarchal society.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
A Sunset of the City
Gwendolyn Brooks
Boy Breaking Glass
Boy Breaking Glass
Gwendolyn Brooks
Cynthia in the Snow
Cynthia in the Snow
Gwendolyn Brooks
Maud Martha
Maud Martha
Gwendolyn Brooks
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Speech to the Young
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Gwendolyn Brooks
The birth in a narrow room
The birth in a narrow room
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Blackstone Rangers
The Blackstone Rangers
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Crazy Woman
The Crazy Woman
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Lovers of the Poor
The Lovers of the Poor
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Mother
The Mother
Gwendolyn Brooks
the rites for Cousin Vit
the rites for Cousin Vit
Gwendolyn Brooks
To Be in Love
To Be in Love
Gwendolyn Brooks
To The Diaspora
To The Diaspora
Gwendolyn Brooks
Ulysses
Ulysses
Gwendolyn Brooks
We Real Cool
We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks