Gwendolyn Brooks – författare

Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more—including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."

By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.

När Gwendolyn Brooks 1950 tilldelades Pulitzerpriset för sin andra diktsamling var hon den första afrikan-amerikanen som mottog det. Tre år senare utkom "Maud Martha", hennes enda roman. Nu kommer den för första gången på svenska.

Maud Martha Brown är en liten flicka som växer upp på sydsidan i tjugotalets Chicago. Bland ruffiga krogar och förvildade bakgårdar drömmer hon: om New York, romantik, sin framtid. Hon beundrar maskrosor, lär sig dricka kaffe, förälskar sig, inreder sin kokvrålägenhet, hör föredrag på universitetsområdet, tar ur en kyckling, köper hattar, föder ett barn. Men hennes mer ljushyade make när också drömmar: om Foxy Cats Club, andra kvinnor.

Och "skärvorna av förstummat hat" - när en säljare säger ett visst ord, det där biobesöket, grymheten hos en varuhustomte - är hela tiden närvarande.

"Maud Martha" är ett djärvt poetiskt kollage och ett enastående porträtt av ett vanligt liv: ett liv levt i vishet, humor, protest, vrede, värdighet och glädje.

';When Miss Brooks. . . writes out of her heart, out of her rich and living background, out of her very real talent, then she induces almost unbearable excitement.' New York Times

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, HarperCollins is proud to present this library of American classics drawn from our storied catalog. Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world.

By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks's Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.

This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrageincluding the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.