black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

Gwendolyn Brooks

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Milk Myself
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Challenge Enjoyment Experience Feeling Publish Writing
It is brave to be involved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Initiative One Liner
The forties and fifties were years of high poet-incense; the language-flowers were thickly sweet. Those flowers whined and begged white folks to pick them, to find them lovable. Then the ’60s: Independent fire!
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Fire Flower Independent Language Poet Sweet
It is brave to be involved. To be not fearful to be unresolved.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Brave Character Fear
One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Animal Cat Happiness Media News Reason
Don’t let anyone call you a minority if you’re black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You’re not less than anybody else.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Identity Minority Worth Yourself
People are so in need, in need of help. People want so much that they do not know.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Help Knowledge Need People
We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Bond Business Each Other Friendship Relationship
We don’t ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Acceptance Different Existence Flower Ourselves Reason
I know that the Black emphasis must be not against white but FOR Black.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black White
Beware the easy griefs / that fool and fuel nothing.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Easy Fools Fuel Grief
When white and black meet today, sometimes there is a ready understanding that there has been an encounter between two human beings. But often there is only, or chiefly, an awareness that Two Colors are in the room.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Color Human Room Understand White
Exhaust the little moment soon it dies.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Death Moments Time
Truth-tellers are not always palatable. There is a preference for candy bars.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Chocolate Preference Truth
What I’m fighting for now in my work… for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.
GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Black Expression Fight Home Oppression Project Work

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

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We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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