21 pages • 42 minutes read
The Lovers of the Poor
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Background
Literary Context
Gwendolyn Brooks is an important voice in African American poetry, as the first Black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first Black woman to serve as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (what is now the Poet Laureate position). According to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:
Brooks offered a new fusion in African American poetry. Influenced by writers such as Hughes and by the high modernist tradition then epitomized perhaps by Robert Lowell, she moved as a poet between relative simplicity and [...] a complexity of prosody [or patterns of rhythm], learned allusion, and sustained irony (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. Princeton University Press, 2012. p. 23).
Renowned poet Langston Hughes was a member of the Harlem Renaissance, which focused on celebrating Black life and arts, such as dance, poetry, visual arts, fashion, and more. Hughes’s celebration of local Black communities and blues music can be seen in Brooks’s work.
Modernism is a concept that encompasses many philosophies and fields of art. Poetic modernism utilizes strong imagery and rejects formal constraints. The modernist tradition in which Brooks wrote included many allusions, or references, to other poems. For instance, she wrote about the epic Roman poem, The Aeneid, by Virgil. Brooks was also an early feminist who wrote about uterus-related issues such as abortion.
Historical Context
Alongside Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks was at the center of the Chicago Black Renaissance Literary Movement. This movement, which occurred in the 1930s-50s, promoted Black arts and culture, as well as educated people about the effects of racism. The Chicago Black Renaissance was a result of the Great Migration of Black people from southern states, and other predominantly white and racist locations, to Chicago. This first occurred between 1916-18: Brooks’s parents were part of this migration, moving from Topeka, Kansas to Chicago when she was still an infant.
The Great Depression of 1929 was also a motivating factor for the Chicago Black Renaissance, as it caused many Black businesses, in what was known as Chicago’s Black Metropolis, to collapse. The Black community in Chicago, centered in Bronzeville, responded to riots and violence, as well as expansive and legal racial discrimination, by coming together in solidary and uplifting each other through promotion of the arts. In the 1960s, Brooks aligned herself with the younger generation’s Black Power and Black Arts movements. These movements focused on self-sufficiency and solidarity within Black communities, as well as promoting Black aesthetics in art.
Brooks’s fictional Ladies’ Betterment League draws upon the history of the cult of true womanhood from the 19th century, as well as eugenics movements. The cult of true womanhood was a social movement to define the sphere of women’s activity to the home. This was a concept for and by rich women who did not have to work and could engage in “productive” leisure such as music, flower arranging, and philanthropy. The cult of true womanhood looked down on women who had to work or otherwise engage in stereotypically masculine pursuits outside of the home.
Additionally, Brooks’s title “Ladies’ Betterment League for the women’s philanthropic guild” alludes to the Human Betterment League of North Carolina and the American South. This organization worked to promote white supremacy through mass sterilization—especially of Black, poor, and disabled persons.
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By Gwendolyn Brooks
