Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks, "Maud Martha" and Societal Perception of Skin Deep Beauty
             "was spurned by members of her own race because she lacked social or athletic abilities, a light skin, and good grade hair." (Galegroup.com)
             Gwendolyn Brooks throughout her life had to deal with this belief that black is not beautiful. The overcastting notion that an African American woman that has "Negro features" is not beautiful is confronted in her novel "Maud Martha". "Maud Martha" is a series of vignettes that captures snapshots of a black woman's life from childhood to motherhood. Brooks examines the black woman and the people in her environment, which is laden with poverty and discrimination. Although this novel examines the many flaws of human nature from racism, sexism, and classism, the attempt of this paper will be to examine the discrimination due to appearance placed on Maud Martha within her microcosm. However there are some parallels between Maud Martha and Brooks which seems to suggest that this novel is a "thinly disguised autobiography" that relays Brooks's sentiments into written form. Brooks and her character in the novel, both from a very young age experience discrimination and allow for a bitter sentiment to ferment into a reverberatingly conscious state. Several times in the novel it is shown that perhaps Maud Martha's imagination was perhaps the greatest proponent in ingraining the conception that Black features are not beautiful. In addition, "Maud Martha" from the beginning somehow portends of Brooks inevitable "great awakening", as both after enduring so much discrimination realize that there is a "demure prettiness" even in the seemingly ordinary. ( Brooks, 1650)
             From the beginning of the novel, Maud Martha before facing her first encounter of color discrimination has inadvertently realized the notion of...