(I want to) write for the people…
Pearl S. Buck, regarding her great novel The Good Earth
GWENDOLYN BROOKS poet of the Beat
Gwendolyn Brooks has the distinction of being the first Black person to receive the Pulitzer Prize (for Annie Allen in 1950). One of the most innovative poets in the literary landscape of America, she was born in 1917 in Topeka, Kansas. Her family moved when she was young to the more urban city of Chicago, which imparted a street-smart influence that still informs her work. Brooks wanted to bring poetry to the poor Black kids of the inner city, and she attracted them with rapid-fire, tightly wound iambic pentameter that predated rap. In later life, she took a more radical bent, hooking up with the revolutionary Black Beat writer LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) and with Don L. Lee, and jumped into the causes of African Americans with both feet. She became a tough and angry Black Power poet, penning verses grounded in classical style deconstructed through the lens of her newfound racial awareness and commitment to cause. Forty years after her prizewinning feat, her poetry is still raw, fresh, and commanding.
I want to clarify my language. I want these poems to be free. I want them to be direct without sacrificing the kind of music, the picture-making I’ve always been interested in.
Gwendolyn Brooks
GRAZIA DELEDDA songs of Sardinia
While Pearl Buck and The Good Earth are household names, the Italian novelist Grazia Deledda is much less familiar. But she received the Nobel Prize for Literature twelve years before Buck and was a powerful voice among her people.
Born in 1871 in Sardinia, Deledda was a country girl who had little exposure to formal education. She did have access to books, however, and read avidly. She came from a troubled clan and was seemingly the only family member to escape illness or criminality; thus she ended up bearing the brunt of household chores and responsibility. Still, she managed to write in her precious spare time.
She married in 1900, and with her new husband moved to Rome, where she sought a broader readership for her work. She soon received approval from the critics and began writing intently, striving for excellence, writing what she knew best—stories of the life and passions of the peasants of Sardinia: in her words, a place of “myths and legends.” Deledda was dedicated to her craft and produced a considerable body of work, including her favorite novel, Canne al vento (Reeds in the Wind), the story of a dissolute family centered around the guilt of a servant, and La Madre (The Mother), about the turbulent relationship between a mother and her son. In addition to her novels and short stories, she produced one volume of poetry, Paesaggi sardi (Sardinian Landscapes), as well as a translation of Balzac and a nonfiction analysis of the customs of her native island.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1926, the first Italian woman to be so honored. She died ten years later of breast cancer, but not before the publication that year of La chiesa della solitudine (The Church of Solitude), a semiautobiographical novel about a woman who deals with her breast cancer diagnosis at the cusp of the twentieth century by keeping it a secret, with predictable human fallout; it was published in an English translation by E. Ann Matter in 2002. Her autobiography, Cosima, was published posthumously the next year.
LUTIE EUGENIA STERNS librarian extraordinary
In 1887, Lutie Sterns began teaching in the Milwaukee school system. She quickly became appalled at the paucity of books for her students and made such use of the public library for her kids that library officials offered her the job of superintendent of the circulation department. Lutie’s passion for the public library system would lead her to travel the state indefatigably by train, boat, buggy, and sleigh, preaching the importance of public libraries, and according to legend, wearing out five fur coats in the process. This was no easy feat—Lutie had a bad stammer, but she cared so much for the cause that she wrote her speeches in such a way as to avoid the letters she had trouble with. Before she “retired” to campaign for women’s suffrage and child labor protection, she had established 101 free libraries and 1,480 traveling libraries in the state of Wisconsin.
GABRIELA MISTRAL voice of the people
A poor, rural schoolteacher of mixed race, Gabriela Mistral went on to become the first Latin American woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature. She was born in the Chilean village of Montegrande in 1889. Her mother, Petronila Alcayaga, was a teacher of Basque descent, and her father, Jeronimo Villanueva, also a teacher, was a poet of Indian and Jewish birth. Jeronimo was overly fond of wine and not quite so attached to his duties as a breadwinner and father; he deserted the family when Gabriela was three. As a schoolgirl, Gabriela discovered her call to poetry and tapped into her own stubborn independence, switching her birth name, Lucila, for her choice, Gabriela. As an adult, she also chose a fitting surname, Mistral, hinting at a fragrant Mediterranean wind.
Her first love was a hopelessly romantic railroad worker who killed himself when the relationship faltered after two years. Her first book of poetry, Sonetas de la Muerta (Sonnets of Death), was written as a result of her sadness, guilt, and pain over the death of this man. In 1914, she received Chile’s top prize for poetry.
In the ‘20s and ‘30s, she wrote many volumes of poetry, including Desolación (Desolation), Ternura (Tenderness), Questions, Tala, and a mixed-media anthology, Readings for Women. In addition to writing and teaching, Mistral felt a special sympathy for women and children and worked to help victims of World Wars I and II. She made social strides as an educator as well. She initiated programs for schooling the poor, founded a mobile library system, and traveled the world, gleaning whatever information she could to improve Chile’s education system. In 1923, she was named “Teacher of the Nation.” She became an international envoy and ambassador for her country off and on for twenty years, eventually serving in the League of Nations and the United Nations.
In the late 1920s, a military government seized power in Chile and offered Mistral an ambassadorship to all the nations of Central America. Mistral refused to work for the military state and made a scathing public denouncement of the government machine. Her pension was revoked, and Mistral had to support herself, her mother, and her sister through her writing. She lived in exile for a while in France, eventually moving to the United States, where she taught at the University of Puerto Rico and at Middlebury and Barnard Colleges.
In 1945 she received the Nobel Prize. Upon accepting the revered award, Gabriela Mistral, in her plain black velvet, made a sharp contrast with Sweden’s dashing King Gustav. Pointedly, she didn’t accept the prize for herself, but on behalf of “the poets of my race.” Mistral died in 1957 and was mourned by her native Chile, where she was revered as a national treasure. She was the “people’s poet,” giving voice to the humble people to whom she belonged—the Indians, mestizos, and campesinos—and scorning rampant elitism and attempts to create a racial hierarchy in Europe and in her beloved Chile.
I consider myself to be among the children of that twisted thing that is called a racial experience, or better, a racial violence.
Gabriela Mistral
LORRAINE HANSBERRY young, gifted, and Black
Chicago native Lorraine Hansberry was born in 1930 to a politically aware and progressive family who knew that they had to work to make the changes they wished to see. But they paid a price. When Lorraine was only five, she was given a white fur coat for Christmas but was beaten up