Maud Martha
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 1917-20002022
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Maud Martha Brown is a little girl growing up on the South Side of 1940s Chicago. Amidst the crumbling taverns and overgrown yards, she dreams: of New York, romance, her future. She admires dandelions, learns to drink coffee, falls in love, decorates her kitchenette, visits the Jungly Hovel, guts a chicken, buys hats, gives birth. But her lighter-skinned husband has dreams too: of the Foxy Cats Club, other women, war. And the 'scraps of baffled hate' - a certain word from a saleswoman; that visit to the cinema; the cruelty of a department store Santa Claus - are always there. Written in 1953 but never published in Britain, 'Maud Martha' is a poetic collage of happenings that forms an extraordinary portrait of an ordinary life: one lived with wisdom, humour, protest, rage, dignity, and joy.
Maud Martha / Gwendolyn Brooks ; introduction by Margo Jefferson.
London : Faber & Faber, 2022.London : Faber & Faber, 2022.
240 pages ; 20 cm
9780571373253 (pbk)
English
2609534