Black female consciousness is in essence an attitude of the mind and the way in which black people live, act and express themselves. It is founded that in Gwendolyn Brooks poems and principal of self-appraisal by black female themselves. Brooks poetic works may be read as an effort to promote to emergence of black female consciousness and on endeavor to articulate and highlight unrecognized place and role of the black woman, and particularly the black mother in the culture and society does not come forward to recognize her identity sometimes even her existence.
Brook’s female consciousness change into subjects and gives them voices to articulate their emotions, feelings and their problems: in this way she makes them visible human beings with individual identities. She entrusts the central roles to female conscious and give them what Mac.G.Henderson calls “black and female expressions (cherry/1A wall 24) with this voice and expression, her forcefully speak against the identities and the colour discriminations committee against African –American woman in a raciest and sexist society. Brooks want to change the black woman, who have attained the awareness of the identity and rise their anger and resentment against social and gender injustice. Black female are also conscious of their place and role to change social and political scenarios.
Brooks reveals Black conscious of the African-American woman from that of a sexual thing and takes them not in their common state of invisibility in order for them to become self-governing and self-confident women with individual voices. Brooks uses them to voice protests next to racial, gender, and colour inequity, to fight against oppression and unfairness, and to subvert the main culture and systems that have rendered them annulled of together spirit and individuality. Her works are occupied by images of distress and the browbeaten black women of Bronzeville, who stand for the down and out of the nation’s black neighborhoods.
Brooks’ sexual the same as racial identity and her experiences in a Chicago ghetto have enabled her to look at urban experience of black women by means of a new dream. Her lyrical work may be read as an effort to support the appearance of black, female partiality and an attempt to expressive and highlight the unspoken and unrecognized place and role of the black woman, and mostly the black mother, in the culture and society that does not recognize her identity and, now and then, even her subsistence.
In most of her early poems, she makes poor black women subjects, for she knows so as to, as Paulo Freire has put it, “They cannot enter the struggle as objects in order to later become human beings” (68). The oppressors contain stereotyped the browbeaten in such a method that the browbeaten have been distorted, moreover as non-persons or inanimate or imperceptible objects. But they want to become human beings by means of lively identities, not as stereotypes, they will have to fight as subjects not as substance. She transforms them keen on subjects and gives those voices to eloquent their emotions, feelings and problems. Her characters vigorously talk against the indignities and discrimination dedicated against African-American women in a racist and sexist society. Her women are transformed women who have attained the consciousness of their individuality and voice to eloquent their annoyance and resentment against social and gender unfairness. They are also conscious of their place and role in the changing social and political scenarios.
She is also trying to make her society appreciate the social, psychological, emotional, and economic troubles of African-American women and their image and identity. Her moral vision, imaginative ability, and her skill to negotiate among dependable discourse and internally influential dialogue may augment to the women’s struggle. It will not be complicated for them to incorporate her thoughts and plans to undermine the preexisting social and ethical systems in their struggle. A famous feature of her poetry and her novel is the varying role of black women from addresses to speakers, or from somebody who is explained by others to somebody who speaks for herself, about herself, and by herself. This change of role from impartiality to subjectivity from makes allows them to play important roles, in order to seek for social and economic mobility, and to figure importantly in the ethical, social, economic, and political life of their community.
Her treatment of women differs from that of her elder generation, such as Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, who also set their writing in an urban atmosphere, in that she spotlights the experiences of impoverished urban women in her works. In A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Annie Allen (1949), and The Bean Eaters (1960), her first three books of poems, her female characters, mothers, in meticulous, are the central characters. Whereas there is no hesitation that Wright and Ellison allocate specific roles to the women characters in their works, they are not the major players of the plot; somewhat they are backdrop figures or play second swindle in their urban world. Other than Brooks, in her works, concentrates her notice on the belongings of the “urban experience” on together African-American men and women, importance that of the female characters and transmission to them the most essential roles in order to depiction the crash of urban experiences on social, ethical, and emotional life of women. Her work is obvious by powerful and strong female characters that play the major roles in their families, as well as in their societies. Their most famous role is that of soldiers in the clash against disparity and injustice in society. They are women with strong wills who do not present to the inauspicious chances in their lives and struggle against exploitation and injustice of all kinds.
Brook’s female characters, particularly mothers, vary from traditional female characters in this respect. Her characters are unbending, disobedient, and non-conformist, whereas the traditional idea of “good woman-hood”, as explained by Ajuan Maria Mance in her book, Inventing Black Women, is that of a woman that is modest, obedient, and that tolerant of social norms that have been laid down by the male dominated. She situates women in particularly commanding positions.
Brook’s works, they are no longer unseen or identitiless figures, fallen beings, and sex symbols, somewhat, they are ethically, expressively, psychologically strong and powerful characters who struggle and struggle against those values and norms that strangle their imaginations, squash their thoughts, and demote them to back seats. Her women expose the disagreeable and unwanted aspects of their society. Her women clutch up a reflect to society which reflects its follies and foibles, ills and vices, cruelties and injustices. Their speeches and utterances undermine and destabilize the main systems so that they might reconfigure new ones, which will be favorable to their aspirations and ambitions. Her women depict unattractive aspects of society, but do not worry and stink against them; somewhat, they touch the scruples and consciousness of the readers by pointing out the tragedies, sufferings, and miseries of deprived African-American women.
Brooks uses her characters to expose the vices and weaknesses in her society and satirizes them with no resorting to pessimism and aggression. Her characters do not tell us that there are wickedness and vices, such as, injustice, domination, bribery or racial discrimination; somewhat, they point out the disastrous situation in which they exist and its relationship to individuals in hopes, that we might learn a ethical imminent from the juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty, death in life, and romance and actuality. In her works, transforms not only the roles of African-American women from substance to subjects and from spectators to speakers, other than their stereotyped images from denigrated portraits to distinguished ones, and from sex objects to strong and powerful women by means of social, ethical, and political visions. It is something unusual for African-American literature of the first part of the twentieth century to portray African-American woman as self-defined and self-respecting figures, because the male writers of this time.
Another image assigned to black women in those days was that of an immoral and profligate woman who yields to her each sexual desire. Brooks in her works she tries to alleviate the damage complete to African-American women by such images which encourage them as lifeless objects, evil semi-human beings, and creatures of unrestrained and unrestrained sexual requirements. She tries to change their image by rendering her female characters self-respect, decency, and power. She presents them as spiritually and ethically strong figures. Some of her women are prostitutes,