# data[].attributes.body
In her writing, Gwendolyn Brooks illustrates African American’s struggles with racism. Her work supports the idea of the American Dream because it demonstrates characters the find success despite their humble beginnings. This is through her works showing her hard work, strength, and determination that she had to have growing up as a young black girl throughout the 20's and 30's and wind up becoming successful in the end.

# data[].attributes.headline
Source 1: An Appreciation Of Gwendolyn Brooks

# data[].attributes.subject
Source 1: An Appreciation Of Gwendolyn Brooks

# data[].attributes.body
Gwendolyn made a major shift to talking about racial issues in the country. She started to begin to try and make a change in the country through her writings. he Brown vs the board of education court case really caused a switch in Mrs. Brooks’s topic in her writings. She shows that the American Dream is a real thing in her writings and that America just needs improvement. By expressing herself she was able to speak to a lot of people in that time period who were going through the same stuff. She also would speak about wanting to continue the tradition from previous generations of black writers by speaking out on these difficult issues. Multiple poets speaking out on these difficult issues goes a long way if you are trying to have an end goal of getting change.

# data[].attributes.headline
Source 2: A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction

# data[].attributes.subject
Source 2: A Life Distilled: Gwendolyn Brooks, Her Poetry and Fiction

# data[].attributes.body
Gwendolyn Brooks’s work switched from being more held back and less on controversial or political topics, to more of a controversial and political poet. She started to use her platform to talk about her struggles growing up and how she has seen her people deal with racism throughout her life. She discusses how things are improving but have a lot more work to be done. Other black writers critiqued her for being too easy on the issue, while other black writers thought she was going too far with what she was saying because they believed it could get her in trouble. This being said really makes her work being described as “admirable” justified, as she would take the criticism and risk her career for the greater good of the country as a whole.

# data[].attributes.headline
Source 3: Forms of Identity in Gwendolyn Brooks’s WWII Poems

# data[].attributes.subject
Source 3: Forms of Identity in Gwendolyn Brooks’s WWII Poems

# data[].attributes.body
Gwendolyn Brooks during WWII made a lot of pieces of work that were about the war. These pieces of work were some of her earliest known. The poems were about the war, people that she knew in the war who survived or died, and stories of African American heroes that were in the war who’s stories she felt were never told.  She also used her work to show the good and bad that happened in the wars from American’s and vocalizes her want for peace and change in the future for the country and for her people. Mrs. Brooks in one of her poems on WWII writes about a black male who died during the attacks on Pearl Harbor who broke the segregation rules against him that would not allow him to use weapons. He ended up shooting down Japanese planes helping try and save lives in a heroic way which this story being told changes people’s minds who were ignorant at the time.