Analysis of Gwendolyn Brooks' "We Real Cool" Gwendolyn Brooks grew up in the slums of Chicago, and most of her poetry came from her experiences living there (Mootry and Smith 6). Among those experiences, she noticed a disturbing trend of young black males dropping out of school an...

Gwendolyn Brooks The late Lorraine Williams Bolton once said, speaking of Gwendolyn Brooks, "the pattern of her rearing was similar to...that of many Chicagoans. It tended to encourage inwardness and withdrawal into imaginative resources." (Kent 4) Brooks's childhood and upbrin...