"We Are Each Other's Magnitude": Gwendolyn Brooks as Mentor
Curated by Lauren K. Alleyne
Executive Director, Furious Flower Poetry Center
Poet Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry (1950). She was renowned for her generous mentorship, which extended from children in Chicago schools to published poets around the country. In particular, Brooks was a beacon to poets of the Black Arts Movement—the cultural arm of the Civil Rights movement—such as Haki Madhubuti and Nikki Giovanni.
Side A: The broadsides showcased in the Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Room feature work by Brooks and some of the Black Arts Movement poets she mentored—Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and Angela Jackson, who, like Brooks, served as a poet laureate of Illinois.
Side B: The Broadsides showcased between the Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Room and the Furious Flower Poetry Center suite demonstrate a lineage of mentorship, beginning with Brooks, who mentored Center founder, Dr. Joanne Gabbin, who in turn mentored Lauren K. Alleyne, the Center’s current executive director.
Side A: The broadsides showcased in the Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Room feature work by Brooks and some of the Black Arts Movement poets she mentored—Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and Angela Jackson, who, like Brooks, served as a poet laureate of Illinois.
Side B: The Broadsides showcased between the Gwendolyn Brooks Reading Room and the Furious Flower Poetry Center suite demonstrate a lineage of mentorship, beginning with Brooks, who mentored Center founder, Dr. Joanne Gabbin, who in turn mentored Lauren K. Alleyne, the Center’s current executive director.
Furious Flower Poetry Center
