18 pages • 36 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Snow takes up a large amount of the poem, becoming a character in itself, representing whiteness as seen by the poem’s speaker, a young Black girl named Cynthia. The snow has a quieting effect as it “sushes” and “hushes” (Lines 1-2) much like whiteness oppresses and quiets the voices of Black people. It can move with intention, shown as it “twitter-flitters” (Line 4) away from Cynthia. It laughs, like a person would, mentioned twice, as the narrator says “it laughs away from me” (Line 5) and “it laughs a lovely whiteness” (Line 6). These personified actions have an antagonistic quality: The snowflakes distance themselves from the girl observing them, and their laughter excludes her or is possibly at her expense.
The snow is also inaccessible; when it leaves to go “some otherwhere” (Line 9), Cynthia feels that it is “so beautiful it hurts” (Line 11). The young girl longs for its whiteness to remain, but is aware that she is catching the snow in a moment not intended for her. She feels a sense of inadequacy. However, even as the snow “sushes” and “hushes,” she remains unsilenced, willing to express her hurt and desire. In her 1964 forward to the collection New Negro Poets: USA, edited by Langston Hughes, Brooks wrote: “Every Negro poet has ‘something to say’ […] His mere body, for that matter, is an eloquence.
By Gwendolyn Brooks
A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon
Gwendolyn Brooks
A Sunset of the City
Gwendolyn Brooks
Boy Breaking Glass
Gwendolyn Brooks
Maud Martha
Gwendolyn Brooks, Elin Hilderbrand
my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
Gwendolyn Brooks
Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward (Among them Nora and Henry III)
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
Gwendolyn Brooks
The birth in a narrow room
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Blackstone Rangers
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Chicago Defender Sends a Man to Little Rock
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Crazy Woman
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Lovers of the Poor
Gwendolyn Brooks
The Mother
Gwendolyn Brooks
the rites for Cousin Vit
Gwendolyn Brooks
To Be in Love
Gwendolyn Brooks
To The Diaspora
Gwendolyn Brooks
Ulysses
Gwendolyn Brooks
We Real Cool
Gwendolyn Brooks