He eventually abandons Annie, who is left “derelict and dim and done.”Ī SURPRISED QUEENHOOD IN THE NEW BLACK SUN: THE LIFE & LEGACY OF GWENDOLYN BROOKS by Angela Jackson Beacon Press, 208 pp., $24.95īrooks won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry that year for “The Anniad” and the collection in which it appeared, titled Annie Allen. Annie Allen suffers the effects of the war: Her husband returns with post-traumatic stress disorder and a depressing awareness of the “white and greater chess” of America. While almost all Americans benefitted from the post-war boom-both economically and socially-African-Americans failed to reap the full benefits of a country still fraught with racial tensions. “The Anniad” takes place against the backdrop of World War II. At the same time, Brooks details the social conditions that ensure Annie’s dreams remain unrealized, that force her to mature early, and ultimately leave her disillusioned. The poem, published in 1950, sweeps through the life of Annie Allen, an ordinary black girl who dreams of finding happiness and attaining self-consciousness in 43 stanzas. Left to folly or to fate, / Whom the higher gods forgot, / Whom the lower gods berate / Physical and underfed / Fancying on the featherbed / What was never and is not “Think of sweet and chocolate,” she writes: The opening lines of Gwendolyn Brooks’s epic “The Anniad” are, like the rest of the poem, deceptively uncomplicated.
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