Annie Allen

Gwendolyn Brooks · 1949 CE · Poem · Modern / American · Contemporary

A girl on the South Side grows up on hot combs and Sunday chicken, dreams of a prince who will be tall and sweet and chocolate, and marries a man who comes back from the war to a kitchenette he will not stay in. The central section compresses that marriage into forty-three tightly rhymed stanzas under a title that puts her name where the Iliad's belongs. It took the Pulitzer in 1950, the first ever awarded to a Black writer.

Open Annie Allen in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Closest analogues

• Anne of Green Gables
  L. M. Montgomery · 1908 CE · Novel

  63% · 11 shared
  Coming-of-AgeComing of AgeLoveHeroineInnocentBildungsromanThe HouseThe Gardenvs Societyvs SelfModern / American
• Summer
  Edith Wharton · 1917 CE · Novel

  63% · 11 shared
  PsychologicalComing-of-AgeComing of AgeClass & InequalityHeroineInnocentBildungsromanThe Housevs Societyvs SelfModern / American
• Wives and Daughters
  Elizabeth Gaskell · 1865 CE · Novel

  63% · 10 shared
  Coming-of-AgeComing of AgeLoveClass & InequalityHeroineInnocentBildungsromanThe Gardenvs Societyvs Self
• Maud Martha
  Gwendolyn Brooks · 1953 CE · Novel

  61% · 12 shared
  PsychologicalComing-of-AgeRace & IdentityClass & InequalityContemporaryHeroineBildungsromanThe Housevs Societyvs SelfLyricalModern / American
• Not Without Laughter
  Langston Hughes · 1930 CE · Novel

  60% · 10 shared
  Coming-of-AgeRace & IdentityComing of AgeClass & InequalityInnocentBildungsromanThe Housevs SocietyLyricalModern / American
• Another Life
  Derek Walcott · 1973 CE · Poem

  58% · 12 shared
  PoemPsychologicalComing-of-AgeComing of AgeLoveContemporaryBildungsromanMeditationThe Housevs Societyvs SelfLyrical