ABSTRACT: Twentieth-century author Gwendolyn Brooks’s fiction and poetry have been much studied by feminist and race-studies scholars, but her work has only recently begun to receive attention by ecocritical scholars. This essay intervenes at this intersection of feminist, race, and ecocritical studies by examining Brooks’s 1953 novella Maud Martha through a Black ecocritical lens to demonstrate how her protagonist, Maud, utilizes nature as a survival tactic. Analysis of the novel’s houseplants, roots, and air reveals how domestic practices like gardening reconnect African Americans to nature and reaffirm their humanity in an inhospitably segregated environment. Maud uses nature physically and linguistically to gird herself against the racist and misogynist onslaughts she experiences and to find avenues for hope that make the daily lives of mid-century African Americans more bearable.
Victoria E. Chandler (Mon,) studied this question.