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“the mother” 131
It’s worth noting that the Comstock laws, which prevented the sale
of any birth control and the dissemination of information about birth
control, were only invalidated in 1938. Birth control methods, when
available, were still very much unreliable, compounding and frustrating
women’s bids for reproductive control.
Abortion remains a perpetually controversial taboo. Later poems
such as Sexton’s and Jan Beatty’s “An Abortion Attempt by My
Mother” (1995) are more blatant, graphic, and personal than Brooks’
earlier poem. Yet Brooks’ work supplies a hard-hitting, taboo-breaking
exposure of the same issues that plague women today and remains a
testament to her bravery and uncompromising poetic resolve. When
Studs Terkel asked Brooks in 1961 if Richard Wright might, “in
later years,” have reconsidered his position on omitting “the mother”
from Brooks’ collection, she replied, “I’d rather think he might have
changed later” (5).
WORKS CITED
Aurthur, Kate. “Television’s Most Persistent Taboo.” New York Times July 18,
2004, sec. 2: 27.
Beatty, Jan. “An Abortion Attempt by My Mother.” Mad River. Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. 29.
Bloom, Harold, ed. Gwendolyn Brooks. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2000.
Brooks, Gwendolyn. The Essential Gwendolyn Brooks. ed. Elizabeth Alexander.
New York: Library of America, 2005.
. The World of Gwendolyn Brooks. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
. Report from Part One. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1972.
. “The Mama and the Papa.” Reading “the mother.” Poetry Off the Shelf:
Online Journal and Podcast. (9/16/08). http://www.poetryfoundation.org/
journal/audioitem.html?id=577
Flynn, Richard. “ ‘The Kindergarten of New Consciousness’: Gwendolyn
Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood.” African American
Review Vol. 34 (Fall 2000): 483–99.
Gery, John. “Subversive Parody in the Early Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks.”
South Central Review 16.1 (Spring 1999): 44–56.
Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. “The Women of Bronzeville.” Sturdy Black Bridges:
Visions of Black Women in Literature. Ed. Roseann P. Bell, Bettye J. Parker,
and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. 1979.
157–70.