Though Maud never travels far from home, her restless imagination ranges widely. But Maud Martha's riotous parade of human feeling will make you wonder what Brooks could have done with your life story. The plot here resembles your life or mine: good days and bad, no headlines. Published in 1953, Maud Martha is the story of a girl who becomes a woman in 1940s black Chicago, told with minimal drama and maximal beauty. Gwendolyn Brooks, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who died in 2000, published only one work of fiction for adults: the indispensable Maud Martha, a novella made up of 34 vignettes. All Things Considered talks with writers about their favorite buttonhole books. All readers have them - and so do writers. in English and an MFA in creative writing and teaches at Washington and Lee University, she is still not sure whether to call Maud Martha a novel or a novella.Ĭall them buttonhole books, the ones you urge passionately on friends, colleagues and passersby. She received the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award for the stories in Get Down. Solomon's work has been featured in Vibe, Essence, and the anthology Naked: Black Women Bare All About Their Skin, Hair, Hips, Lips and Other Parts. Her first book, a collection of stories entitled Get Down, set mostly in Philadelphia, will be released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on Oct. Asali Solomon was born and raised in West Philadelphia.

Gwendolyn brooks about race