We Real Cool

The poem “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks shows an emphasis on word choice and order. The vision that appears in my mind, while reading this poem, is a gang of colored teenagers from the city who are growing up in a world that has paved a way for a life that is described in the poem. Dropping out of school, singing sin, thinning gin, and dying soon (young) are not what we want for our teenagers. Critic D.H. Malhem describes this as a maternal poem. When I read it with this thought in mind, I can envision a black mother mocking the words of the gang after her son has been in trouble, jailed or died young due to his associations with gangs and the type of life described in the poem.
Lauri Beier