Gwendolyn Brooks Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Kathryne V. Lindberg

SOURCE: "Whose Canon? Gwendolyn Brooks: Founder at the Center of the 'Margins,'" in Gendered Modernisms: American Women Poets and Their Readers, edited by Margaret Dickie and Thomas Travisano, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996, pp. 283-311.

In the following essay, Lindberg discusses Brooks's artistic development, critical reception, and identity as a spokesperson for African-American women. According to Lindberg, Brooks sought to overcome "the double bind of a black woman artist who would be heard as something other than victim of or exile from her race and class."

     Black Poet, White Critic
 
     A critic advises
     not to write on controversial subjects
     like freedom or murder
     but to treat universal themes
     and timeless symbols
     like the white unicorn.
     A white unicorn?—Dudley Randall,
 
     "You can say anything you want about black women"—

or so said a poet-critic colleague of mine when I mentioned that I was writing an essay on Gwendolyn Brooks. This could be a green light or a roadblock. Except...
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