Gwendolyn Brooks Obstacles

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Gwendolyn Brooks actually has a very interesting story. She was born in June of 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. She grew up at a time where racism and segregation were prominent, and she definitely had racial barriers to overcome in order for her to become a distinguished writer. When she was young, her family moved to Chicago, Illinois where she grew up. Throughout her high school career, she experienced pretty much every kind of school that existed back then in regards to race. She attended an all-white school, transferred to an all-black school and then graduated from an integrated high school. Afterwards, she went further and earned her degree from a junior college. With these four school environments, she witnessed and became part of the racial…show more content…
Something interesting to note is the fact that she actually did not pursue a four-year degree because she was confident she wanted to be a writer and found that a degree was not necessary. If that is not impressive I do not know what is. I cannot set up my dentist appointments without my mother, let alone decide my future with such confidence. Furthermore, she stated, “I am not a scholar, I’m just a writer who loves to write and will always write” (https://en.wikipedia.org). In her writing, she wanted to use her creativity to overpower the racist barriers that surrounded her. This barrier was a tactic to alienate and isolate blacks in America making them vulnerable to persecution. But black poetry, following the Harlem Renaissance, was also an outlet as well as a tactic to break this barrier open. It is stated by Joanne Gabbin in her work entitled Furious Flower: African American Poetry, “African American poetry is the chronicle of race struggling to lift its face all unashamed in an alien land.” This highlights Brooks’ greatest struggle in life, which was the struggle of becoming an African American poet in a country that was plagued with white oppression and racial

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