Applying Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome To The Characters In Gwendolyn Brooks's A Street In Bronzeville And The Bean Eaters

Abstract

This study seeks to explore racism, manhood, and womanhood in two volumes of Gwendolyn Brooks`s early poetry: A Street in Bronzeville (1945) and The Bean Eaters (1960). To accomplish this task, the researcher employed the relatively recent theory of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS), as formulated by Joy DeGruy. DeGruy`s work throws into relief Brooks`s unique genius. More specifically, the current study: 1) examines the effects of racism on black and white characters, as they confront issues of everyday living, ostracism, dominance, and lynching; (2) explores the coping mechanisms which African Americans have acquired to confront black and white patriarchy, racial segregation, and thwarted class aspirations; and 3) considers the reactions of black and white women to their precarious positions in a society committed to racial hierarchy. Through these issues, Brooks offers insight into the positive and negative psychological structures of American racism. Not only does she accurately identify particular traumas, but also, through her characters, she presents specific psychological solutions--seeming, in fact, to have mastered PTSS Theory before it was actually formulated. While performing her ingenious (and eerily clinical) postmortems, Brooks renders her characters with compassion and humanity. That Gwendolyn Brooks was a great poet is indisputable, but what has not been adequately acknowledged is the fact that she was likewise a keen psychologist whose work anticipated Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome Theory decades before DeGruy established the concept. This fact, alone, may lead researchers to apply PTSS Theory to Gwendolyn Brooks`s other works.