SOURCE: "'Taming All That Anger Down': Rage and Silence in Gwendolyn Brooks' Maud Martha," in Massachusetts Review, Vol. XXIV, No. 2, Summer, 1983, pp. 453-66.

In the following essay, Washington discusses the critical reception of Maud Martha and the suppressed rage, self-loathing, and reticence displayed by Brooks's autobiographic heroine.

      Then emotionally aware
      Of the black and boisterous hair,
      Taming all that angêr down.

Gwendolyn Brooks

When Gwendolyn Brooks' autobiographical first novel, Maud Martha, was published in 1953 it was given the kind of ladylike treatment that assured its dismissal. Reviewers invariably chose to describe the novel in words that reflected what they considered the novel's appropriate feminine values. The young black woman heroine was called a "spunky Negro girl" as though the novel were a piece of juvenile fiction. Reviewers, in brief notices of the novel, insisted on its optimism and faith: Maud's life is made up of "moments she...