Gwendolyn Brooks

Like the writers of the Harlem Renaissance, Gwendolyn Brooks writes about racial injustices and social issues.

I have read many of Gwendolyn Brook’s poems in the past. “We Real Cool” and “The Boy Died in my Alley” were my favorites. In “The Boy Died in my Alley” Gwendolyn Brooks discusses the death of a young man. The narrator of this poem reflects on the boy’s death and the violence in the neighborhood: “The Shot that killed him yes I heard as I heard the Thousand shots before…” It seems that gunshots and violence are such an everyday occurrence that he/she began to accept them. However, the narrator understands that by accepting this way of life they hold some responsibility in the boy’s death: “I have always heard him deal with death…I have closed my heart-ears late and early. And I have killed him ever.” This poem and others by Brooks show the problems of racial injustice that still plague inner cities today.