TL;DRAbstract
In the late 1960s, at the height of her career, Gwendolyn Brooks .changed publishers, switching from Harper & Row, a major press that could give her widespread distribution and publicity, to small, new, African American-run Broadside Press. Harper & Row had just published arguably her most accomplished book, In the Mecca. in 1968. Sloughing off, the very next year, great stretches of her mainstream-poetry-buying public was a profoundly anti-economic move. Many who had bought her work in the past would now have significant difficulty finding it--indeed, even learning it existed--given the considerably smaller resources of poet Dudley Randall's then-recently founded press. Riot would be among the first books (granted, a small one--a chapbook, really) published by, essentially, a one-man operation that had, until that year, 1969, published only broadsides. This move has usually been interpreted as a sign of Brooks's commitment to African American cultural nationalism. In fact, she said so
Chat with Paper
AI Agents for this Paper
In the late 1960s, at the height of her career, Gwendolyn Brooks .changed publishers, switching from Harper & Row, a major press that could give her widespread distribution and publicity, to small, new, African American-run Broadside Press. Harper & Row had just published arguably her most accomplished book, In the Mecca. in 1968. Sloughing off, the very next year, great stretches of her mainstream-poetry-buying public was a profoundly anti-economic move. Many who had bought her work in the past would now have significant difficulty finding it--indeed, even learning it existed--given the considerably smaller resources of poet Dudley Randall's then-recently founded press. Riot would be among the first books (granted, a small one--a chapbook, really) published by, essentially, a one-man operation that had, until that year, 1969, published only broadsides. This move has usually been interpreted as a sign of Brooks's commitment to African American cultural nationalism. In fact, she said so
Keywords
Chat
Click to start Chat