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Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Literature. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America.

Her poems described conditions among the poor, racial inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women. But her skill was more than her ability to write about struggling black people. She was an expert at the language of poetry. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience.

In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago. The South Side of Chicago is where many black people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was “A Street in Bronzeville” that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skill and her powerful descriptions of the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection.

In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. She won the prize for her second book of poems called “Annie Allen.” “Annie Allen” is a collection of poetry about the life of a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death and being poor. Ms. Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life.

Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called “Maud Martha.” “Maud Martha” received little notice when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult life of many women are popular among female writers today.

In some of her poems, Gwendolyn Brooks described how what people see in life is affected by who they are. One example is this poem, “Corners on the Curing Sky”.

By the end of the 1960s, Gwendolyn Brooks’s poetry expanded from the everyday experiences of people in Bronzeville. She wrote about a wider world and dealt with important political issues.

【语篇导读】本文是一篇人物传记。该文章主要讲述了第一位获得普利策文学奖的非裔美国作家Gwendolyn Brooks的写作生涯，她用诗歌描述黑人的生活，增加了人们对黑人文化的理解。她主要有三部作品，凭借第二部获得普利策文学奖，在20世界60年代，她的写作范围从布朗兹区人民的日常生活扩大到一些政治问题上。