Includes bibliographical references and index.

On Gwendolyn Brooks / Mildred R. Mickle -- Biography of Gwendolyn Brooks / Charles M. Israel, William T. Lawlor -- The Paris review perspective / Jascha Hoffman -- The historical and social context of Gwendolyn Brooks's poetry / Kathy Rugoff -- The critical reception and influence of Gwendolyn Brooks / Martin Kich -- Gwendolyn Brooks and the epic tradition / Matthew J. Bolton -- Close reading as an approach to Gwendolyn Brooks's "The Chicago defender sends a man to Little Rock" / Robert C. Evans -- Sweet bombs / Danielle Chapman -- The satisfactions of what's difficult in Gwendolyn Brooks's poetry / Brooke Kenton Horvath -- Double consciousness, modernism, and womanist themes in Gwendolyn Brooks's "The anniad" / A. Yemisi Jimoh -- Heralding the clear obscure: Gwendolyn Brooks and apostrophe / Lesley Wheeler -- Dialectics of desire: war and the resistive voice in Gwendolyn Brooks's "Negro hero" and "Gay chaps at the bar" / Ann Folwell Stanford -- "A material collapse that is construction": history and counter-memory in Gwendolyn Brooks In the Mecca / John Lowney -- A prophet overheard: a juxtapositional reading of Gwendolyn Brooks's "In the Mecca" / Sheila Hassell Hughes -- "My newish voice": rethinking Black power in Gwendolyn Brooks's Whirlwind / Raymond Malewitz -- Signifying Afrika: Gwendolyn Brooks's later poetry / Annette Debo -- Reflecting violence in the warpland: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot / Annette Debo -- Killing John Cabot and publishing Black: Gwendolyn Brooks's Riot / James D. Sullivan -- "The kindergarten of new consciousness": Gwendolyn Brooks and the social construction of childhood / Richard Flynn.