Name: _____________________________

Date: _______________

Period: ________

The Mother
A Raisin in the Sun
Directions: Please read the following poem. After you read the poem, answer the discussion
questions on this paper or on a separate sheet of paper.

Gwendolyn Brooks: Biography

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, on June 7, 1917. Brooks moved to
Chicago at a young age. She began writing and publishing as a teenager, eventually achieving
national fame for her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville. In 1950 Brooks became the first
African American to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book Annie Allen. She died in her Chicago
home on December 3, 2000. Early Life Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917,
in Topeka, Kansas. When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago as part of the
Great Migration. Brooks was known as "Gwendie" to close friends and family during her
childhood. Brooks attended three high schools: the prestigious, integrated Hyde Park High
School; the all-black Wendell Phillips Academy High School; and the integrated Englewood
High School. The racial prejudice that she encountered at some of these institutions would shape
her understanding of social dynamics in the United States and influence her writing. In 1936,
Brooks graduated from Wilson Junior College, having already begun to write and publish her
work. Writing Career Brooks began writing at an early age. She published her first poem in a
children's magazine at age 13. By 16, she had published approximately 75 poems. She began
submitting her work to the Chicago Defender, a leading African-American newspaper. Her work
included ballads, sonnets and free verse, drawing on musical rhythms and the content of innercity Chicago. She would later say of this time in her life, "I felt that I had to write. Even if I had
never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the
challenge." Brooks worked as a secretary to support herself while she developed as a poet. She
took part in poetry workshops, including one organized by Inez Cunningham Stark, an affluent
woman with a literary background. While Stark was white, all of the participants in her
workshop were African American. Brooks made great strides during this period, garnering
official recognition. In 1943, her work received an award from the Midwestern Writers'
Conference. Brooks published her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, in 1945. The book
was an instant success, leading to a Guggenheim Fellowship and other honors. Her second book,
Annie Allen, appeared in 1949. Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Annie Allen, making
her the first African American to win the coveted Pulitzer. Other honors received throughout her
lifetime include Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize. In the early 1960s, Brooks embarked
on a teaching career as an instructor of creative writing. She taught at Columbia College in
Chicago, Chicago State University, Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia University and
the University of Wisconsin. She also continued to write and publish. Her long poem "In the
Mecca," published in 1968, was nominated for a National Book Award in poetry. Personal Life
Brooks married Henry Lowington Blakely Jr. in 1939. The couple had two children, Henry and
Nora. Gwendolyn Brooks died of cancer on December 3, 2000, at the age of 83, at her home in
Chicago, Illinois. She remained a resident of Chicago's South Side until her death. She is buried
at Lincoln Cemetery in Blue Island, Illinois.

The Mother
GwendolynBrooks

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

Discussion Questions
The Mother
1. What is the tone of the poem?

2. Is there a rhyme scheme? If so, what is the rhyme scheme?

3. List three reasons why someone might want an abortion.

4. When did abortion become legal in the United States? What was the title of the famous court
case that legalized abortion?

5. What movement encouraged women to speak up for the right to have an abortion?

6. If you were to summarize the moral of this poem in one sentence, what would it be?

7. Why were abortions so dangerous before the legalization of abortion? Which group of
women was at a greater risk for abortion complications?

8. How does this information better explain Ruths situation in A Raisin in the Sun?

Name: _____________________________

Date: _______________

Period: ________

Background Knowledge
A Raisin in the Sun | Ruths Choice
Directions: Please read the following article. After you read the article and the poem, answer the
discussion questions on this paper or on a separate sheet of paper.
Abortion in the 1950s: In the 1950s, about a million illegal abortions a year were performed in
the U.S., and over a thousand women died each year as a result. Women who were victims of
botched or unsanitary abortions came in desperation to hospital emergency wards, where some
died of widespread abdominal infections. Many women who recovered from such infections
found themselves sterile or chronically and painfully ill. The enormous emotional stress often
lasted a long time.
Poor women and women of color ran the greatest risks with illegal abortions. In 1969, 75% of
the women who died from abortions (most of them illegal) were women of color. Of all legal
abortions in that year, 90% were performed on white private patients.
The Push for Legal Abortion:In the 1960s, inspired by the civil rights and antiwar movements,
women began to fight more actively for their rights. The fast-growing women's movement took
the taboo subject of abortion to the public. Rage, pain, and fear burst out in demonstrations and
speakouts as women burdened by years of secrecy got up in front of strangers to talk about their
illegal abortions. Women marched and rallied and lobbied for abortion on demand. Civil liberties
groups and liberal clergy joined in these efforts to support women.
Reform came gradually. A few states liberalized abortion laws, allowing women abortions in
certain circumstances (e.g., pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, being under 15 years of age)
but leaving the decision up to doctors and hospitals. Costs were still high and few women
actually benefited.
In 1970, New York State went further, with a law that allowed abortion on demand through the
24th week from the LMP if it was done in a medical facility by a doctor. A few other states
passed similar laws. Women who could afford it flocked to the few places where abortions were
legal. Feminist networks offered support, loans, and referrals and fought to keep prices down.
But for every woman who managed to get to New York, many others with limited financial
resources or mobility did not. Illegal abortion was still common. The fight continued; several
cases before the Supreme Court urged the repeal of all restrictive state laws.
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the famous Roe v. Wade decision, stated that
the ``right of privacy...founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty...is
broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.'' The
Court held that through the end of the first trimester of pregnancy, only a pregnant woman and
her doctor have the legal right to make the decision about an abortion. States can restrict secondtrimester abortions only in the interest of the woman's safety. Protection of a ``viable fetus'' (able
to survive outside the womb) is allowed only during the third trimester. If a pregnant woman's
life or health is endangered, she cannot be forced to continue the pregnancy.