In some of her early poetry, Gwendolyn Brooks wrote about the south side of Chicago-- the very place where she called her childhood home. Her first publication, A Street in Bronzeville was deeply committed to capturing the life of African Americans in their homes and communities. The famous poem “Kitchenette Building” in the book A Street in Bronzeville gained heavy recognition because of the use of powerful imagery and description of what it was like to be an African American living in the United States. Specifically, “Kitchenette Building” explores the struggle of living in a crowded community and the dream of escaping this reality through the use of symbols and powerful diction; concluding that dreams are individuals that are best left
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This poem seems to suggest that no matter how ambitious a person may be, they will not be able to escape the realities of their life. Not only did Brooks purposely exclude the “I” from the poem, but “we are things” seems to suggest the involuntary ways in which she had to live, she also makes it a point to make the word “dream” the subject of its own stanza. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong/ Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” (Brooks) She makes the reader wonder if the concept of dreaming itself is a symbol or type of escape away from reality. Getting to the second stanza, the dream was forced to reside with a series of sensory metonyms like “onion fumes,” “fried potatoes,” and “yesterday 's garbage.” (Brooks) This language gives us the clear image of these “dreams” having to compete with these olfactory senses. However, we can also notice that Brook 's chooses to contradict herself by using a series of verbs like “ people sing and flutter” (Brooks) making it somewhat unclear whether this point of dreaming is one of Brook 's personal ambitions, the goals of social injustice or even the condition of just being asleep. This contradiction allows for the symbol of dreaming in “Kitchenette Building” to slip to the “dream” becoming a metaphor. The stanza is presented in the hypothetical “could”, and it is uncertain to the reader of what kind of dream is being dreamed
This poem seems to suggest that no matter how ambitious a person may be, they will not be able to escape the realities of their life. Not only did Brooks purposely exclude the “I” from the poem, but “we are things” seems to suggest the involuntary ways in which she had to live, she also makes it a point to make the word “dream” the subject of its own stanza. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong/ Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” (Brooks) She makes the reader wonder if the concept of dreaming itself is a symbol or type of escape away from reality. Getting to the second stanza, the dream was forced to reside with a series of sensory metonyms like “onion fumes,” “fried potatoes,” and “yesterday 's garbage.” (Brooks) This language gives us the clear image of these “dreams” having to compete with these olfactory senses. However, we can also notice that Brook 's chooses to contradict herself by using a series of verbs like “ people sing and flutter” (Brooks) making it somewhat unclear whether this point of dreaming is one of Brook 's personal ambitions, the goals of social injustice or even the condition of just being asleep. This contradiction allows for the symbol of dreaming in “Kitchenette Building” to slip to the “dream” becoming a metaphor. The stanza is presented in the hypothetical “could”, and it is uncertain to the reader of what kind of dream is being dreamed