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Reflecting violence in the warpland: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Annette Debo

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By 1977 Brooks herself was disappointed in Riot." "Riot was really an effort at communication with a lot of people. I didn't succeed except in patches," Brooks said (Hull and Gallagher 33). But perhaps she could not have succeeded because of its timing, too close to the very real conflagrations of the 1960's riots. Perhaps as we look back from the twenty-first century, our view is clearer. The riots no longer pose such a frightening vision and can instead be viewed more fairly in the American tradition of violence that appears sometimes necessary for social change. Living on the south side of Chicago, Brooks knew the conditions that caused the uprisings as well as the wellspring of grief and explosion of frustration that followed the assassination of Dr. King. More than any other figure, King stood for nonviolence, and when white Americans responded even to him with bullets, the "unheard," as he phrased it, suddenly and loudly were heard.

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Just as the riots were not an anomaly in American history but instead part of a disquieting US tradition of violence, Riot is not an anomaly in Brooks's body of work or even notably different from her pre-1967 poetry. As she said, "No, I have not abandoned beauty, or lyricism, and I don't consider myself a polemical poet. I'm a black poet, and I write about what I see, what interests me, and I'm seeing new things. Many things that I'm seeing now I was blind to before, but I don't sit down at the table and say, 'Lyricism is out.' No, I just continue to write about what confronts me" (Report 151). However, the riots were controversial, escaping reasonable assessments, as the police reacted ever more strongly. The literary response imitated the prevailing political winds, and Riot was not anthologized; it was read by few and dismissed by most.

In 1971, Addison Gayle, Jr., wrote in The Black Aesthetic that "the serious black artist of today is at war with the American society as few have been through American history" (1872), a statement that calls for the same revolution that Maulana Karenga advocates in his prevailing definition of the Black Aesthetic. Brooks must be allowed, by critics, to evolve into the space defined by Gayle and Karenga. (13) At the same time, however, the violence that she chronicles in Riot and her other later poetry should not be seen as extraordinary, even if critics like Gayle and Karenga saw themselves as involved in a uniquely violent revolution. On the contrary, the violence was reasonable, given the perpetual threat of overwhelming white racist violence, and it was particularly American, following the models of many oppressed groups who gained political power through the last resort of violent action. In the end, for Brooks, the violence produces confident, loving people who exist in "the shining joy; / the time of not-to-end" ("An Aspect" lines 20-21); they embody the phoenix risen from the ashes.

Works Cited

Baraka, Amiri. (LeRoi Jones.)"Black Art." Black Magic. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969.

Reflecting violence in the warpland: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot

African American Review, Spring-Summer, 2005 by Annette Debo

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