Maud Martha

By: Gwendolyn Brooks, Margo Jefferson - introduction

Narrated by: Angela Lewis

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 - 2000) was an American poet, educator, and civil rights activist based in Chicago.

Her first collection, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), was greeted with critical acclaim and a Guggenheim fellowship. Annie Allen (1949) won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950, making her the first ever Black author to do so; and her only novel, Maud Martha, was published in 1953. In The Mecca (1968) was nominated for the National Book Award, the same year she was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois. Brooks was an inspiring role model and active participant in the 1960s and 1970s Black Arts Movement, leaving an international house to join the up-and-coming Black publisher Broadside Press.

In 1976, she became the first Black woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters; and in 1985, the first to become Library of Congress Consultant in Poetry. She also published two volumes of autobiography and a book for children, and won a National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1939, Brooks had married Henry Lowington Blakely, Jr, whom she met after joining Chicago's NAACP Youth Council, and they had two children.

Throughout her life, Brooks taught young writers and held numerous academic posts - she was awarded over seventy honorary degrees - and became a professor of English at Chicago State University in 1990 until her death in 2000.

©2022 Gwendolyn Brooks (P)2022 Faber & Faber

Critic reviews

"Such a wonderful book. Utterly unique, exquisitely crafted and quietly powerful. I loved it and want everyone to read this lost literary treasure." (Bernardine Evaristo)

"The quotidian rises to an exquisite portraiture of Black womanhood in the hands of one of America's most foundational writers." (Claudia Rankine)

"Maud Martha reveals the poetry, power and splendour of an ordinary life." (Tayari Jones)

Unique Storytelling

I read “Horse” by Gwendolyn Brooks and was thoroughly absorbed- and educated. So when Susan Cisneros told how she had discovered “Maud Martha” followed a similar storytelling style as Cisneros’ “House on Mango Street,” I was excited to read Brook’s first novel. Thank you, Audible, for carrying it! I have listened and listened again, admiring to way Gwendolyn Brooks carries meaning to her readers scene by scene, each chapter contributing to the whole.

Each word carefully chosen.

Hearing the line in the prologue that Gwenfolyn Brooks chose each word carefully made me listen with both ears and with my heart. This was a deeply moving book.

Wonderful performance of a great work

Simple, poetic, insightful: best to be read aloud although I will also read the text once the book arrives

A beautiful novel

The vignettes are incredibly evocative and involving. There’s so much to relate to. The language and imagery is gorgeous. It came out in the 50s, but every line lives and sparkles today,