In the Mecca

Gwendolyn Brooks · 1968 CE · Poem · Modern / American · Contemporary

Mrs Sallie Smith climbs to a flat in a vast decayed Chicago apartment block with nine children, counts them, finds one missing, and starts knocking along corridors full of people with their own reasons not to look. Behind the doors are a schoolteacher who quotes poets to himself, a woman praying to a cardboard saint, the Blackstone Rangers on the stairs. Written after the 1967 Fisk writers' conference turned Brooks toward the Black Arts movement.

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