Grades 9 and 10 - English Language - High School - Poetry - Sadie and Maud — Flashcards

Gwendolyn Brooks was a twentieth-century African-American poet. Much of her poetry focuses on social, political, class and race issues; many of those poems written in the Sixties provide a commentary on the Civil Rights Movement. Brooks mastered the art of capturing the rhythms of spoken language in her poetry.

Read the poem, answer the questions.

Maud went to college.
Sadie stayed home.
Sadie scraped life
With a fine toothed comb.
She didn't leave a tangle in
Her comb found every strand.
Sadie was one of the livingest chicks
In all the land.
Sadie bore two babies
Under her maiden name.
Maud and Ma and Papa
Nearly died of shame.
When Sadie said her last so-long
Her girls struck out from home.
(Sadie left as heritage
Her fine-toothed comb.)
Maud, who went to college,
Is a thin brown mouse.
She is living all alone
In this old house.

- Gwendolyn Brooks