The Crazy Woman

Gwendolyn Brooks is the author of the lyric poem “The Crazy Woman.” The poem, published in her book of poetry, The Bean Eaters (1960), is about a woman who sings a sad song instead of a joyous song. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s impacts the poem and Brooks’s career. Brooks read authors affiliated with this creative period, and these earlier Black writers helped build Brooks a platform so that she and the speaker of her poem could express themselves freely.  The central message of “The Crazy Woman” is that it is not absurd to give voice to the terrible aspects of life, even if a fair amount of people would rather hear about only happy experiences.

Brooks’s willingness to tackle the unsettling and upsetting parts of life appears in her other poems. In her most famous poem, “We Real Cool” (1960), Brooks deals with the dire consequences of heedlessly rebellious young people. In one of her more controversial poems, “the mother” (1945), Brooks addresses the issue of abortion. As the first Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize, Brooks has a deep and varied canon.