![]() ![]() They are everyday, but in as much as they allow her to imagine a whole meadow and exotic flowers, they bring a sense of expansiveness into her world. What we do get is a sense of how Maud Martha revels in the small details of the dandelions in her yard. Nothing happens plot wise in this chapter except that we are introduced to Maud Martha (and to her sister Helen). ![]() This first chapter is a perfect example of the style. The novel follows the ordinary parts of an arguably mundane life: keeping house, being a domestic servant, having a baby, dealing with racism, and going to the movies, but it focuses on the complexity of feeling and intensity of imagination that animates such a mundane life. Maud Martha, a plain-looking, (only tentatively) middle-class black girl coming of age in Chicago in the late 1920s, is the main character. ![]() There is however a plot an a main character. They each have a number and a title, and many of them read as if they want to be a prose poem. The 34 chapters or vignettes are relatively short. ![]() While Maud Martha is a novel, it is very poetic not only in the poignancy of its descriptions but also in its focus on moments and essence rather than a narrative plot. “ Description of Maud Martha” by Gwendolyn Brooks in Maud MarthaĬaption: “Description of Maud Martha” is the first chapter of Gwendolyn Brooks’s only novel Maud Martha (1954). ![]()
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