Celebrate National Poetry Month by discussing the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize and the first African American woman to be Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now called Poet Laureate. She is credited with bridging “the gap between the academic poets of her generation in the 1940s and the young Black militant writers of the 1960s.”

Suggested reading:

“when you have forgotten Sunday: the love story” (written 1938; published 1945)

“the vacant lot” (written in the early 1940s; published 1945)

“kitchenette building” (1945)

“Sadie and Maud” (1945)

“the rites for Cousin Vit” (1949)

“We Real Cool” (1959)

“The Bean Eaters” (1959)

“The Lovers of the Poor” (1960)

“The Ballad of Rudolph Reed” (1963)

“The Sermon on the Warpland” (1968)

“The Blackstone Rangers” (1968)

“Riot” (1969)

“Primer for Blacks” (1980)

“Young Afrikans” (1987)