The Rare Books and Manuscripts Library celebrates black literature

The university opened an exhibition in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the publication of Gwendolyn Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry novel “Annie Allen.”

The exhibit “‘We Are Each Other’s Harvest’: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Formation of Black Literary Canon” includes letters Brooks received, collections of her writings, and several first editions of anthologies on black literature. The exhibition will be on display at the RBML until May 2025.

RBML acquired a large collection of Brooks’ works and personal items in 2013 and since then the team has worked tirelessly to catalog the collection and make it available to the public.

Chloe Ottenhoff, the RBML catalog coordinator, said she hopes to complete the processing in the next few months.

“A lot of hands have touched the collection, so it’s kind of exciting for us to finally be able to say it’s finally been processed,” Ottenhoff said.

Curators planned the exhibition months in advance and had to select just a handful of pieces from the extensive collection to tell the story of Brooks’ achievements and impact in six cases.

Caroline Szylowicz, Kolb Proust librarian and co-curator of the exhibition, said the hardest part was narrowing down such a large collection into a small exhibition.

“The challenge is to distill from this mass of materials a narrative told through a limited prescribed medium,” Szylowicz said. “From these hundreds of boxes of materials, you could extract many, many, many different stories.”

The curators explored several ideas for the exhibition – beyond just focusing on Brooks’ work – to celebrate the rich history of black poets and activists. Curator Cait Coker mentioned that they ultimately decided on a fusion of several themes.

“We had conversations for several months to figure out how to bring this together, and in the end we put it all together to develop the final concept,” Coker said.

The first two exhibition boxes tell the story of Brooks’ Pulitzer Prize win and include, among other things, a first edition of “Annie Allen,” Brooks’ second volume of poetry from 1949, a letter from her editor, and the telegram informing her of the news other artifacts.

“It was significant because she was the first Black person ever in any category to win the Pulitzer Prize,” Ottenhoff said. “I know a lot of people say the first black woman. No. She talks about it all the time – the first black person, not just a woman.”

The next two cases highlight Brooks’ involvement and contributions to the world of poetry, such as her career as an award-winning Illinois and U.S. poet and consultant to the Library of Congress. The boxes contain photos and paraphernalia from her career, as well as broadsides of some of her better-known poems, such as “We Real Cool.”

Finally, the final cases reveal black American literary history in bibliography format, showcasing several anthologies of black writings from the 18th century to the 1920s, including works by Phillis Wheatley, Langston Hughes, George Moses Horton, and editor Elaine Locke.

Szylowicz said one of the exhibition’s biggest challenges was the limited ability to display books in the boxes.

“They are committed to opening up; “You can’t turn the page behind glass,” Szylowicz said.

The exhibition also includes other items, such as the bust of Brooks, created by artist Sarah Miller. There are only three copies of the bust, one in the Chicago Public Library and the other in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The university was fortunate enough to acquire the bust from the artist’s home after her death.

While the exhibition only features a handful of Brooks’ works, the RBML is teeming with documents that are stored safely. Ottenhoff said she hopes the exhibition will raise awareness of her collection.

“An exhibition is always the tiniest tip of an iceberg, and the point of the iceberg is that you can see it and have an idea of ​​what is there,” Coker said.

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