1a. To whom is this poem addressed? What does the speaker tell these people to do in line 5? What adjectives does the speaker use to describe "the editors of the world"?
2a. What sorts of trials or struggles are mentioned in stanza 2?
3a. What can be found in the women's eyes?
4a. Identify the symbol used in the final stanza. What does it represent?
5a. To what degree does the speaker speak for other African-American women?
1b. What conditions listed in stanza 1 would make life difficult for the people mentioned in line 1? Editors are people who make decisions about what ideas and writings will be published or broadcast. Does the speaker believe that the "editors of the world" pay proper attention to the voices of her "sisters"? Why, or why not?
2b. To what might the "It" at the beginning of line 9 refer?
3b. Which line in stanza 3 suggests that the women have large, unexplored potential? that they help others to achieve harmony and community? that they are intelligent and warm? that they pay attention to other people and therefore know many things that others do not know?
4b. Why do the women "create and train" their "flowers"?
5b. Compare and contrast the speaker's viewpoint in "To Black Women" with that expressed in Langston Hughes's "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" (page 643) and Arna Bontemps's "A Black Man Talks of Reaping" (page 649).
Internal Rhyme. What word in stanza 3 rhymes with what word in the final line?
Parallelism. Which example of parallelism do you find the most compelling? Why?
1. Imagine that you are the speaker. Write a journal entry explaining why you feel a sense of solidarity with your "sisters."
2. Imagine that you are one of the "sisters" in the poem. Write a letter to the speaker describing your personal experiences of having trudged "with fainting, bandaging and death."
3. Imagine that you are an African-American man. Write a lyric poem for an African-American friend that encourages your brother in the struggle for racial equality. You might choose to use Brooks's poem as a model, changing the feminine images to masculine ones.
Base Words and Prefixes. The word monarch comes from mono, meaning "one," and arch, meaning "to rule." Use a dictionary to find the meanings of the following words that use either the prefix mono or the root arch.
1. monopoly
2. monotone
3. monochromatic
4. monogamy
5. monologue
6. monotheism
7. archangel
8. archbishop
9. archenemy
10. matriarch
Bibliography. About the Author on page 775 does not contain a complete list of Gwendolyn Brooks's published works. Using the Internet, compile a complete bibliography for Brooks, listing the title and year of publication. One site that you will find useful is http://www.poets.org.
Title
Year of Publication
