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A prophet overheard: a juxtapositional reading of Gwendolyn Brooks's "In the Mecca"
African American Review, Summer, 2004 by Sheila Hassell Hughes
Brooks clearly identifies her own teachers and students as the primary audience to whom she devotes her work in Mecca. The book itself is dedicated "To the memory of Langston Hughes; / and to James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones, / and Mike Alexandroff, / educators extraordinaire" (vi). These Black men--literary, cultural, and social heroes--form the line in which she seeks to follow. It is they, rather than an identifiable set of literary foremothers, who have mentored the poet and provided models of teaching. In her second dedication-of the title-poem--she redirects this line of influence into the future, and in doing so broadens it to include other women writers. The poem is dedicated ("IN TRIBUTE--") to thirteen of her students from the late 1960s (Melhem 162), almost half of whom are female. She may not be interested in recovering and reconstructing lost Black female "influences," (13) but she does seem committed to fostering a more inclusive future.
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Brooks's shift toward a Black audience is also exemplified by her move to a Black publisher. In the Mecca was Brooks's last book to come out with Harper, and although she left on amicable terms, her change marked a definite shift in allegiance. The poet claimed in 1967 that she had been able, from the first, to have everything she would want published, but she also recognized that others had not been so fortunate (Report 136), and eventually she saw it as her duty and responsibility to support Black publishing efforts. She moved to Detroit's Broadside Press in 1969 and, later, to Third World Press, based in Chicago. Brooks thus took pains to relocate both the production and the reception of her work within a Black space.
We might expect white critics to be somewhat nonplussed by this move. How does one respond to a work so deliberately directed away from oneself? One strategy would be denial--pretending that nothing had changed--and another, chastisement. In "Gwendolyn Brooks: An Appreciation from the White Suburbs" (1969), Dan Jaffe actually employs both. He praises the recently published Mecca as "a major attempt at synthesis" (58) and emphasizes that "there have been no drastic changes in the tactics and subjects she has dealt with over the years." He also stresses the individuality of her poetic voice, which he rightly observes is multiple, and implies that this is what makes at least some of her poems universal--"some that will undoubtably be read so long as man cares about language and his fellows" (53). Jaffe also assumes a very intimate tone for a critical essay. He frequently refers to the poet as "Gwen Brooks"--something her Black colleagues do only in their personal essays of tribute. (14) He appears to be forcing a certain closeness--between his position in the white suburbs and hers in the Black inner-city--that the poet herself resists.
It is, in fact, the inside/outside dichotomy that presents the problem for Jaffe. "The label 'Black poetry,'" he argues, cannot do justice to her varied abilities, to her breadth. While he accepts the identification "as Black" to some degree, he argues that this must be sacrificed to achieve the universal: "The paradox is that poets are committed to step outside of themselves in order to find the special within themselves" (52). The white critic thus privileges a broad, exterior space, which aligns nicely with the white suburbs from which he speaks, over the constraints of a close, Black, urban perspective. Going beyond, transcending, necessarily means speaking to whites. In what sounds today like a shocking demand on the oppressed to humanize her oppressor, Jaffe asserts that
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