Gwendolyn Brooks was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America.
Her poems described conditions among the poor, racial inequality and drug use in the black community. She also wrote poems about the struggles of black women. But her skill was more than her ability to write about struggling black people. She was an expert at the language of poetry. She combined traditional European poetry styles with the African American experience.
In her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the South Side of Chicago. The South Side of Chicago is where many black people live. In her poems, the South Side is called Bronzeville. It was A Street in Bronzeville that gained the attention of literary experts in 1945. Critics praised her poetic skill and her powerful descriptions of the black experience during the time. The Bronzeville poems were her first published collection.
In 1950, Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She won the prize for her second book of poems called Annie Allen. Annie Allen is a collection of poetry about the life of a Bronzeville girl as a daughter, a wife and mother. She experiences loneliness, loss, death and being poor. Ms Brooks said that winning the prize changed her life.
Her next work was a novel written in 1953 called Maud Martha. Maud Martha received little notice when it was first published. But now it is considered an important work by some critics. Its main ideas about the difficult life of many women are popular among female writers today.
In some of her poems, Gwendolyn Brooks described how what people see in life is affected by who they are. One example is this poem, Corners on the Curing Sky.
By the end of the 1960s, Gwendolyn brooks's poetry expanded from the everyday experiences of people in Bronzeville. She wrote about a wider world and dealt with important political issues.
本文属于说明文阅读，作者通过这篇文章向我们介绍了格温德林·布鲁克斯，她是第一位获得普利策文学奖的非裔美国人。
1．What does the text mainly talk about?
A．The life of Gwendolyn Brooks.
B．The poems of Gwendolyn Brooks.
C．The understanding about black culture.
D．The struggles of black women.
答案：B
解析：主旨大意题，根据第一段中的Gwendolyn Brooks wrote hundreds of poems during her lifetime. She was known around the world for using poetry to increase understanding about black culture in America.可知，本文主要介绍了格温德林·布鲁克斯的诗歌，故选B。
2．What can we learn about Gwendolyn Brooks from the second paragraph?
A．She mainly wrote about the struggles of black women.
B．She was good at using the language of poetry.
C．Her writing skills were a little worse than her ability.
D．Her poems were mainly about the African experience.
答案：B
解析：细节理解题，根据第二段中的She was an expert at the language of poetry. 可知，她是一个诗歌语言专家，由此可知她善于运用诗歌语言，故选B。
3．The author develops the passage mainly by ________.
A．providing examples
B．using statistics
C．comparing opinions
D．describing her experiences
答案：A
解析：写作手法题，通读全文可知作者在文中多次举例，因此是通过例子来展开文章的叙述，故选A。
4．In the next part, the author would most probably talk about ________.
A．the difficulties Gwendolyn Brooks would meet
B．the poems related to political issues
C．the awards Gwendolyn Brooks gained
D．the racial inequality the black had to face
答案：B
解析：推理判断题，根据最后一段中的She wrote about a wider world and dealt with important political issues.可知，本段介绍了她所写的关于政治方面的诗歌，由此推知下文可能继续介绍关于政治的诗歌，故选B。
