Copyright Share this page Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in Chicago in a poor yet stable and loving family. Her father was a janitor who had hoped to become a doctor; her mother a teacher and classically trained pianist. Brooks was thirteen when her first published poem, 'Eventide', appeared in American Childhood ; by seventeen she had published a number of poems in Chicago Defender , a newspaper serving Chicago's black population. She attended the leading white high school in Illinois, but transferred to an all-black school, then to an integrated school. In 1936 she graduated from Wilson Junior College. These four academies gave her a perspective on racial dynamics in the city, which was to influence the rest of her writing life. While working for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, she developed her poetic craft, publishing her first collection A Street in Bronzeville in 1945. In this book, which bought her instant critical acclaim, Brooks chronicles the everyday lives, aspirations, and disappointments of the ordinary black people in her own neighborhood. The book also explores the unfair treatment of blacks in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. Brooks was celebrated as a major new voice in contemporary poetry for her technical expertise, innovative use of imagery and idiom, and new perspective on the lives of African Americans. She was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, and Mademoiselle magazine named her one of its "Ten Women of the Year." In 1949, she became the first ever black