MAUD MARTHA has been touted as a classic that, up until now, has been quite hard to get ahold of! To prepare I purchase Brooks' "Selected Poems" and was surprised to see how much of poetry was then a matter of rhyme. This book is a sort of "I-novel" with short chapters that embody form of a poet's novel. Now I understand what the hype was all about!

Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Maud Martha” follows the titular character from her childhood to her marriage and second pregnancy.

The book is written in deceptively simple language, following Maud Martha in many short episodes over years. Maud Martha sees beauty and the poetic around her (that description of dandelions when we first meet her as a child is lovely). She’s got a clear-eyed sense of her value, and what she wants from life, and of the people around her and she feels wise beyond her years.

I had never heard of this work before, though I was familiar with the author’s reputation. I liked the elegance of Brooks’ characterization and writing, as she relates Maud Martha’s experiences and wants, and her unsentimental views on her mother and her husband.

Also, as it’s the backdrop to all their lives, Brooks shows us the casual racism of the white people Maud Martha encounters, as well as the responses of some of the other African Americans to the racism. Brooks let’s the reader realize the injustice of the words and actions through subtle characterization.

Maud Martha the woman and “Maud Martha” the book are terrific studies in understated character and social commentary, and well worth a read.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Faber and Faber limited for this ARC in exchange for my review.

With thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really wish I’d had a physical copy! I’ve rounded up a 3.5 because the prose is startling, the way Brooks has put vignettes together and the sensible against the stark of the absolute everyday in which a Black girl grew up, was married, had children in America 1920s-1950s and I suspect the digital copy I had did it a disservice

The book is slim and brief and over-flowing with realism. It goes from a girl wanting to a woman’s resignation on some things and then again, determination on others. Maud Martha may or may not be remarkable depending upon your definition, or the people she later counts and neighbours and yet… this book is like nothing else I’ve read.

The episodes or snippets show a life and in itself tell a story - you only have to look and put it together - it is not particularly narrative driven although things occasionally happen, nor is it character driven. Maud Martha is not the prettiest, and the book has a couple of funerals early on, but things do not always turn for the worst and just sometimes living in the moment is enough. It is a time and place and a woman in it.

While I had heard of Gwendolyn Brooks, I have never read her. This is her only novel, (novella), which has been out of print for decades, and has apparently never been in print in the UK. Thanks to Faber, it will be available to us again.

Told as a series of vignettes, we follow the life of Maud Martha from her childhood in Chicago to adulthood as a wife and mother in New York. Some of the scenes will stay with me for some time, her and her husband's visit to the cinema for one, and her child's visit to Gather Christmas. Many are glimpses at an everyday experience, such as her struggles with a chicken that the butcher has no time to prepare. Beautifully written.

*Many thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for a review copy in exchange for an honest opinion*

What a gem this 1953 novella from acclaimed American poet Gwendolyn Brooks is – and why has it taken so long for it to be published in the UK? Still, better late than never – this quiet small masterpiece, understated, beautifully crafted, charming in so many ways but nonetheless with an undercurrent of rage and resentment and bitterness against the racism and sexism that haunts Maud Martha’s life. In 34 short vignettes we meet her as a 7-year-old growing up in Chicago and journey with her until her 40s, as she struggles to lead the best possible life available to her, and we share her hopes and aspirations. A poignant and deeply moving account of an everyday ordinary life transformed into an extraordinary life by the power of language. Unforgettable.

I don't have much to say about this, mostly, I think, because its own images and words and rhythms have been so carefully and precisely picked that I don't want to find any more. I liked it a lot, its subtle, slightly rueful way of attending to the world & loving it; I'll come back to it in another spring, when everything's early and dewy and the dandelions are bright butter-yellow.

This is a beautifully written novella about Maud Martha, from her childhood to adulthood as a wife and mother. The early chapters see things through the eyes of a child, dandelions, death, differences between her and her sister. As she gets older relationships, her place in the world, moving to New York, marriage , neighbours , childbirth; an ordinary life told in short chapters, poetically revealing the beauty and nastiness in everyday life. Easily read in one go.

Really glad to have discovered these Faber Editions as introduced me to a writer that had passed me by. Great to have the introduction to this valuable piece of work. It feels so important to bring these books back into the public eye especially those with messages that need hearing sadly still today. This story following Maud's life starting in the 20s and is a creative way of charting a life. Thoroughly enjoyed this book and shall be recommending.

Loved being given the chance to read this re-discovered novel and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not my usual genre but I’ll certainly be seeking more of this type in the future. Thank you Faber

I'm glad I was able to read this arc because I discovered an excellent and fascinating new to me author. This is a riveting, well written, and compelling story.
I loved the storytelling and the style of writing. It wasn't always easy but it was worth any effort.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The Faber Editions have been great so far. Described by the publisher as a collection "which spotlights rediscovered gems: books for the future, rooted in history." I really enjoyed Mrs Caliban, and can vouch for this one too. (Although They: A Sequence of Unease didn't work quite as well for me.)

Maud Martha is a bildungsroman following a young black woman in 1940s Chicago. We meet Maud Martha Brown when she is a child at school, following her through to her marriage and when she has her first child, Paulette. The story is told in very brief chapters which form snapshots of different pivotal moments of her life which help shape the woman she becomes.

I had read some rave reviews of this before I picked it up but the novel impressed me even more than I had hoped it might: the writing is excellent, the story timeless and sadly many of the issues Maud Martha faces are still pertinent in the 21st Century. Recommended!

Activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Gwendolyn Brooks produced only one novel Maud Martha first published in 1953. It grew out of a projected poetry cycle American Family Brown that would chronicle the struggles of a very ordinary Black family, but that proposal was rejected by Brooks’s publishers and as a compromise she transformed her poetry into prose, although her prose retains the intensity, lyricism and precision of a poem. It’s a deceptively simple concept, a series of vignettes or “tiny” stories featuring a working-class, Black woman, Maud Martha Brown who, like Brooks, was born in 1917, and after the Great Migration grew up on Chicago’s South Side, in the predominantly Black area of Bronzeville.

Despite critical acclaim and a word-of-mouth, cult following Brooks’s novel’s been out of print in America since the 1990s and never published in Britain, at least until now - it seems fitting that this new edition comes from publisher Faber & Faber, who have such a long association with poets and poetry. This edition’s introduced by writer and critic Margo Jefferson who sums it up in two words, “Quietly extraordinary.” And she’s so right, it’s an exquisite piece of writing, with a wonderful, luminous, almost painterly quality. Yet it’s also a work that’s firmly grounded in reality, that doesn’t shy away from the uglier or more painful aspects of existence for a woman like Maud Martha in a racist, patriarchal America.

Brooks follows Maud Martha from her childhood in the 1920s through her marriage, becoming a mother and surviving WW2. Maud Martha has a very modest life, a small, shabby, roach-infested apartment, not much money. She’s dark-skinned with a husband who has a weakness for lighter women, and she’s not happy with her looks. But she loves to read and she has a powerful imagination, an eye for detail and an ability to see beauty or humour in small, overlooked things. Brooks has talked about the autobiographical elements of her narrative but this seems more like a vision of the path not taken, what her life might have been like if she hadn’t developed her career as a writer. But it’s not a bitter, rueful tale, Maud Martha’s the unsung heroine, she’s special: in her sensibility, her strength, her ability to negotiate the harsher realities of white society, a world where even a visit to a department-store Santa Claus is a fraught experience for a Black mother and child. In some ways too this is an oblique exploration of creativity, the creativity that emerges in Maud Martha’s unusual perspectives on her surroundings, the striking imagery she conjures from the seemingly-inconsequential. I first read this last year and thought it was brilliant, after reading it again I still think so, and it’s great to know that it will be once more freely circulating for others to discover Brooks’s remarkable heroine and her memorable style.

Gwendolyn Brooks is one of America's most celebrated poets, but her only novel, 'Maud Martha', written in 1953, has never been published in the UK, a travesty that has finally been remedied by Faber in this edition. This is a slim but brilliant novel which follows the inner life of a young African-American woman from the 1920s through to the 1940s in thirty-four short and perfectly crafted chapters.

Brooks recounts Maud Martha's experiences of childhood, marriage and motherhood through vignettes of her everyday life. Brooks's writing is expressive, lyrical and wise, at times devastatingly so - for instance, when, reflecting on her husband's restlessness, she comments that "She was afraid to suggest to him that, to most people, nothing at all "happen." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after the had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all."

Race, gender and class serve as a constant backdrop to Maud Martha's experiences, and there are some acutely powerful moments which depict the realities of life for an ordinary Black woman during this era. But these labels ever eclipse the simple fact of Maud Martha's humanity, and the real achievement of this novel is how Brooks creates such a fully rounded and alive centre of consciousness in so few pages.

This edition also comes with an excellent new introduction by Margo Jefferson who makes a compelling argument for the significance of this novel. Hopefully it will now remain in print. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

This was a different genre than my usual, I did struggle at first but I did end up enjoying. I'll definitely pick up some more Faber Editions after this. Thank you so much

Already a fan of pBrooks' prize winning poetry and autobiographical writing, it was a tremendous pleasure to read Maud Martha. Written in episodes, the writing is perfectly clear even when describing moments as nebulous as a child waking from a dream. Growing up in Chicago in the 20's and 30's, the earlier bits will resonate with readers of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, while the book goes on to capture Maud's reflections on her experiences as a Black woman who is wife, a mother and a questioning intellect searching for the things you can love. Highly recommend, a great book group read with many points of connection and discussion.

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. It was an enjoyable story with a touch of whimsy. I definitely wasn’t ready for it to end.

Published in 1953, this is the only novel by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first black woman to win the poetry Pulitizer prize, it has taken some time for it to be recognised as the captivating gem that it is. It is about to be published for the first time in Britain, having just read this I am astonished and cannot believe it has taken so long. This is a moving and understated poetic portrayal of a ordinary black woman's life in the 1940s and 1950s, elevated to the extraordinary by Brooks, of the not very pretty Maud Martha Brown in Chicago, through the artistic pictures formed through the short, astute, exquisite vignettes of her life from childhood, teenage years, a wife and mother up to the point of her second pregnancy. There are insightful observations of her relationship with her much prettier sister, and with her lighter skinned husband, Paul, who struggles to accept her darker skin tones.

There is an introduction in this edition by Margo Jefferson who rightly underlines Brooks inclusion of autobiographical elements in the novella as she probes Maud Martha's thoughts, feelings, and experiences, yet not speaking for her. There is the desire to be cherished in what can be a harsh world with its everyday grim realities of racism for a black American working class woman, finding a dignity, resilience and freedom through the power of her imagination, through which she able to claim her rights and freedoms. Jefferson goes on to ask the reader, like Maud Martha does, what will you do with this life? There is the beauty of a dandelion, the shortfalls in their tiny Kitchenette home that must be endured, the birth of her daughter, Paulette, the pain, anger and hurt of a visit with Paulette, to a white Santa in a department store, and other everyday activities of life.

This is a short, philosophical and inspiring novel that makes a powerful and unforgettable impact, with the artful brevity, simplicity and beauty of the prose, capturing the many roles played by Maud Martha throughout her life, providing a valuable history of a black woman in this historical period. It is the poetic language and remarkable resilience of Maud Martha in the face of life's harsh challenges that makes this remarkable book sing, her refusal to be defined and imprisoned by them, finding the strength and inner resources to shape and claim the inner freedom to be who she is. A stellar read that I recommend highly. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

Maud Martha, first published in 1953, is the only novel by the celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Like the author, the eponymous protagonist “was born in 1917” and grew up in Chicago. The novel describes her daily experiences as a black woman over two decades, from childhood to marriage and motherhood. And while it is always dangerous to mistake the author for a character in a book, in this case Brooks herself observed (in her 1972 memoir Report from Part One):

"Much in the “story” was taken out of my own life, and twisted, highlighted, or dulled, dressed up or down…"

The novel highlights the pervasive racism and sexism in American society. It is written in the third person, but often (albeit not always) from the perspective of the protagonist. Through her eyes we cannot but note that even when black and white people nominally “interact”, there is the weight of condescending glances, hurtful comments (whether intended or not), a sense of ‘difference’, even in the most banal of contexts, such as when Santa Claus snubs Maud Martha’s daughter Paulette. Maud Martha is no outspoken hero and generally keeps her views to herself. Yet, the novel brims with subtle, quiet fury and occasional outbursts of joy. In the final pages, we meet a pregnant Maud Martha, accompanied by her daughter Paulette, out to celebrate the end of the Second World War. Despite everything, life is still full of hope.

When a poet writes prose, the tritest observation is that the result is “poetic” and “lyrical”. For once, however, such a comment is hardly out of place. This slim novel – perhaps more of a novella – is made up of thirty-four brief chapters capturing specific events, episodes or observations. There are no wasted words and the impressionistic vignettes often surprise the reader with arresting images – dandelions are “yellow jewels for everyday, studding the patched green dress of [the] back yard”, snowflakes are “the very finest bits of white powder coming down with an almost comical little ethereal hauteur, to add themselves to the really important, piled-up masses of their kind”.

It is surprising that this novel has never been published in the UK before. Faber & Faber now address this lacuna with their new edition, introduced by Margo Jefferson as part of the “Faber Editions” series.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/04/maud-martha-by-gwendolyn-brooks.html