Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African-American writer to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Gwendolyn Brooks was one of the most influential and most recognized poets of the 20th century. She was known for her craftsmanship of the written word. She was the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize in 1950 and one of the first poets recognized by the Library of Congress. Brooks was known for her generosity to younger poets and for using the power of her pen to work for social justice.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born on June 17, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, but her family moved to Chicago when Brooks was young. Her father was a janitor and her mother a schoolteacher; both parents were strong supporters of their child’s love for reading and for writing poetry. By the time Brooks was 17, her poems were often published by the Chicago Defender, the newspaper that served Chicago’s African American citizens. She attended junior college and worked with the Chicago chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In 1968, Brooks was named poet laureate for the state of Illinois. In 1976, she became the first African American to join the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1985, she was the first Black woman appointed as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress (now, poet laureate). She also received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Frost Medal, a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Shelley Memorial Award, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Guggenheim Foundation. Additionally, Brooks earned more than fifty honorary degrees during her career. In 1995, she was awarded the National Medal of the Arts.

Brooks spent her later years dedicated to public service. She conducted poetry readings at prisons and hospitals and attended annual poetry contests for school children, which she often funded.

Brooks lived in Chicago until her death on December 3, 2000.

"To Those Of My Sisters

Who Kept Their Naturals"

-- never to look a hot comb in the teeth

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Sisters!

I love you.

Because you love you.

Because you are erect.

Because you are also bent.

In season, stern, kind.

Crisp, soft-in season.

And you withhold.

And you extend.

And you Step out.

And you go back.

And you extend again.

Your eyes, loud-soft, with crying and with smiles,

are older than a million years,

And they are young.

You reach, in season.

And All

below the rich rouch right time of your hair.

You have not bought Blondine.

You have not hailed the hot-comb recently.

You never worshipped Marilyn Monroe.

You say: Farrah's hair is hers.

You have not wanted to be white.

Nor have you testified to adoration of that state

with the advertisement of imitation

(never successful because the hot-comb is laughing too.)

But oh the rough dark Other music!

the Real,

the Right.

The natural Respect of Self and Seal!

Sisters!

Your hair is Celebration in the world!

I admire Brooks for embracing her culture and heritage and sharing her perspectives through her passion for poetry. Brooks’s poem “To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals” resonates with me because I have natural hair, and it was a process to learn to love something I was socialized to hate. For me, the poem represents self-acceptance and love, which is a message that can be shared with anyone no matter their background.