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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 explains in one of her memoirs that Marc Crawford, a highly respected Black editor, prompted her to write “Boy Breaking Glass” with the question of “[h]ow ghetto blacks, overwhelmed by inequity and white power, manage to live. Does a black boy […] turn his eyes away from the Statue of Liberty? How does he talk to himself to comfort himself? What beauties are at his disposal?” (Brooks, Gwendolyn. Report, p. 190). In “Boy Breaking Glass,” Brooks explores possible answers to that question. Brooks relies on imagery, diction, and ambiguity to make the case that art in its present state is inadequate to represent the struggle of the dispossessed.
The poem’s title parodies traditional Western art, which represents subordinate people—women, exoticized Others, laborers, and people of color—as objects for the consumption of a privileged viewer. The dedication to Marc Crawford, “from whom the commission” (Line ii), calls attention to the poem as a work of art, something a cultural gatekeeper asked the writer to create. The voice in the early part of the poem belongs to an observer, one trained to look at art critically.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi...
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
A Sunset of the City
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Cynthia in the Snow
Cynthia in the Snow
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Maud Martha
Maud Martha
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my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
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Speech to the Young
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
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The birth in a narrow room
The birth in a narrow room
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The Blackstone Rangers
The Blackstone Rangers
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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
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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
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To Be in Love
To Be in Love
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To The Diaspora
To The Diaspora
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Ulysses
Ulysses
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We Real Cool
We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks