The amazing Gwendolyn Brooks’ career is an anomaly to the literature world, considering she was a black woman in the early 1900s. Her success in the poetry world beat all the odds among minorities and women. Brooks is a Topeka, Kansas native who attended junior college and worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Chicago. Even though she only went to community college, Gwendolyn went on to teach poetry at five credible universities and colleges around the country. In Rita’s introduction of the analogy, she expresses the hardships and obstacles the women in this field faced for the chance to speak their truth. The Mother and A Song in the Front Yard are two phenomenal pieces that convey a story that only a woman can tell. To unpack all the allusions, the symbolism and metaphors in her poems just must put yourself in the shoes of a woman.

The theme of the poem THe Mother is about a woman who had an abortion and is feeling the emotional connection to the baby and mourning the life that she never allowed it to have. The title is telling of the entire poem. She still refers to the woman as a mother even though she has decided not to have the child. The first two lines of the poem are heart wrenching and memorable. “Abortions will never let you forget. You remember the children you got, but you did not get.” It is a physical and mental attachment that changes a women’s life, regardless of the abortion, was vital. “You will never neglect or beat.” Irrespective of the controversy about the options to give children up for adoption or abort it, Brooks pays homage to all the parents that were granted children but neglected their kids or to all the kids who were abused and even killed in foster homes.

A Song in the Front Yard is a remarkable piece about a young girl who is bored of her privileged, perfect life and wants to see how life is like for the less fortunate kids. While finding sources that have analyzed this poem, it is evident that white people looking at this poem can not comprehend it the way I believe Gwendolyn wanted it to be portrayed. The girl in the poem is to be white. White kids not only appropriate culture and attempt to partake in acts they believe are “black,” but when it comes to being stereotyped, denied opportunities, and wrongfully arrested and even murdered, they will never want a piece of that cake. This is the story of a girl who wants to be black until being black is not fun. Brooks does not mention the awful reality that the “charity kids” in the poem live, but the girl’s mother says, “Johnnie Mae will grow up to be a bad woman. That George’ll be taken to jail soon or late”. These lines are pivotal to properly comprehend that even though the girl is naïve now, her mother is teaching her to believe that they are better than the kids who play in the alley. “A girl gets sick of a rose” means she can get tired of the luxury, the easy life, and finds interest in a world completely different from hers. The front yard symbolizes the privilege of ignorance. Not only the ignorance of the little girl but in the mother as well. This poem takes place during a time of racial segregation in which minorities are forced into neighborhoods that are unkept, government-funded, and deprived because of gentrification, discrimination, and economic inequality in available jobs for African Americans. Not to mention, the mother will probably never fathom living in a place where those kids live. But she is sure that her daughter should not mingle with those kids and is confident of their fate even though she unaware of the racial disparity that separates the opportunities they have and the opportunities her daughter has.