Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the great American literary icons of the twentieth century and the first black person awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Over nearly six decades, her poetry showed complex portraits of black American life and served as witness to the stark realities of urban living. A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun delves deep into the rich fabric of Brooks's work and world and traces the literary arc of her long career, using forty-three of her most soul-stirring poems as a guide. It is a commemoration of a writer who negotiated black womanhood and incomparable brilliance with a changing, restless world-an artistic maverick ahead of her time.
