the rites for Cousin Vit

Brooks places Cousin Vit within the literary context of poets who helped make the sonnet famous, including William Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Brooks shows how the sonnet isn’t the exclusive domain of white authors. It’s a form that Black poets—and poets from other historically marginalized groups—can access. Brooks’s use of the sonnet is aligned with her goal to bring poetry to ordinary people and reveal how extraordinary these individuals can be. Cousin Vit deserves to be in a sonnet not because she was famous or a leading historical figure but because she was a regular person who was lucky or “haply” (Line 14) enough to live a vibrant life.

The Harlem Renaissance is another context for “the rites for Cousin Vit.” This literary movement took place in New York City during the 1920s and 30s. It encouraged Black writers and artists to express their lives, voices, and multidimensional identities. Brooks read and admired Harlem Renaissance writers—the poet Langston Hughes, among them. They helped create the platform so that she could write textured poems about Black people like Cousin Vit.

Yet, according to George Kent, Brooks “recoiled at the exotic image” of the Harlem Renaissance and its representation of Black people (Kent, A Life of Gwendolyn Brooks).