When someone asks me what my favorite book is, I usually say something like, “That’s a really tough question,” or “Oh, I couldn’t possibly choose.” Both of these statements are accurate, and give me time to think of an answer, of what my favorite book at that particular moment is. But a reliable reply is Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks, a book which most people have never heard of.

I hadn’t, until I took a class on Black women writers in my sophomore year of college. It was the first book we were assigned to read, and I fell in love with it the moment I opened its pages, as soon as I read the words printed beside the table of contents: “Maud Martha was born in 1917. She is still alive.”

A simple, precise, and powerful statement. Maud Martha remains alive in the year 2026, despite having never really existed in the first place. She lives as she always has, whenever her story is read. She lives within the minds of the reader and the writer, in the conversation that creates her, over and over again.

Maud Martha is the life story of the title character, from childhood to young adulthood. It is told in a series of vignettes, not quite a bildungsroman in structure. Each event creates Maud Martha, but the story is not working towards some definitive coming-of-age conclusion, triumphant or tragic. Instead, reading the novel is a little like flipping through an album, seeing the life of Maud Martha through glimpses, daydreams, and moments.

Gwendolyn Brooks is usually remembered as a poet, the first African American person to win a Pulitzer Prize. Maud Martha is the only novel she ever published. It is 180 pages long. It astonished me when I first read it, and continues to astonish me. I had no idea that a novel—a novella, in fact—could say so much in such little space, and with such deep, earnest compassion. I hope I can convince you to read this book. Because Maud Martha is still alive, waiting to be discovered again.

Self-Determination

A tenant of Second-Wave Feminism is that “the personal is political” (Thorsson, 152). In her essay on Maud Martha titled “Creative Multivalence: Social Engagement beyond Naturalism in Gwendolyn Brooks’s “Maud Martha””, scholar Megan K. Ahern argues that “Brooks focuses on Maud Martha’s inner life, as this is an aspect of existence—and even of revolution—that she takes seriously” (323). She quotes from an interview with Brooks where she spoke of women “really rousing themselves and doing some fiery things, and even more than that, thinking fiery things” (Ahern, 323). Brooks creates in Maud Martha a powerful argument that the internal life can revolutionize the external world. In the very act of writing Maud Martha, in giving “an unheroic ordinary Black girl from Chicago” the opportunity to speak of her soul, Brooks does something revolutionary (Ahern, 323).

From the beginning of the novel, Maud Martha defines herself by “what she like[s]”: “candy buttons, and books, and painted music (deep blue, or delicate silver) and the west sky, so altering, viewed from the steps of the back porch; and dandelions” (Brooks, 1). This first chapter, titled “description of Maud Martha”, creates a portrait of a young girl through that which she cherishes. Brooks expands upon Maud Martha’s dreams (“To be cherished was the dearest wish of the heart of Maud Martha Brown”) and the insecurities that she harbors at seven years old, in comparison to her beautiful older sister Helen (“…the long lashes, the grace, the little ways with the hands and feet”) (Brooks, 2-3).

In just three pages, Brooks creates a vibrant, fully alive character, who is both in love with the world and separate from it, yearning to be more than what she is. Despite this, Maud Martha also recognizes, even at seven, that “when she was not looking at dandelions…it was hard to believe that a thing of only ordinary allurements…was as easy to love as a thing of heart-catching beauty” (Brooks, 2). Maud Martha does not fall into the trap of hopelessness or self-pity. She dances around it, as we all do, but she also thinks of herself as a dandelion: ordinary and a weed to some, but also a flower. With incredible strength of character, Maud Martha refuses to let herself be defined by anything but her knowledge of her own inherent worth, a decision which we see her struggle with throughout the novel.

As she grows, Maud Martha revels in daydreams that pull her to the glamorous world of New York. She defends her right to dream to herself: “What she wanted to dream, and dreamed, was her affair…What was the matter with that? Besides, who could safely swear that she would never be able to make her dream come true for herself?…She was eighteen years old, and the world waited. To caress her” (Brooks, 51). In the imaginary details she conjures (among others, “old (in the better sense) china, a platter of orange and cinnamon cakes…sugar and cream, a Chinese box, one tall and slender flower”) Maud Martha creates a world all her own, dreams that no one can take from her—not even her own creeping cynicism (Brooks, 50). I’ve often sat alone, in crowded, uncomfortable rooms, and thought to myself, “How lucky I am that I have a mind! A mind that can take me somewhere else.” This, in many ways, is what stories are all about.

And yet, there is ambivalence to this as well. As Maud Martha watches her husband daydream later in the novel, “She watched the little dreams of smoke…and she thought about happenings. She was afraid to suggest to him that, to most people, nothing at all ‘happens.’ That most people merely live from day to day until they die” (Brooks, 149). It is not enough to simply dream of living; you have to actually live too, even if the world outside of your head is too often disappointing.

Maud Martha experiences the oppressiveness of racism, sexism, and colorism in her life. She knows that there is nothing inherently wrong with her, but that the world still sees fit to make her life harder because of her appearance. This is even true of her husband: “What I am inside, what is really me, he likes okay,” she thinks. “But he keeps looking at my color, which is like a wall” (Brooks, 87). Brooks does not minimize the effects of the external world on a person. Nor does she suggest that Maud Martha is “triumphant” over her circumstances. Ahern points out in her essay “how often these efforts are required of [Maud Martha]” (316). Maud Martha is brave in her struggle, “learning to love moments” and “smiling beautifully to herself” (Brooks, 78). But that doesn’t make it any less tiring or unfair that she must trek through life as she does.

Nevertheless, Brooks makes it clear that Maud Martha is not powerless, and that her ultimate dream is achievable: “What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other” (Brooks, 22). Self-determination, even in a world set against her, even in a world that makes every day an unnecessary struggle, is worth striving for.

Chickens and Mice, Violence and Creation

In an interview from 1983, Gwendolyn Brooks is quoted as saying, “My works express race and focus on rage.” (Thorsson, 155). It has been suggested that Maud Martha is a story about suppressed rage. As Maud Martha treks through life and injustice, we feel rage on her behalf, and can feel it simmering within her. But I don’t think that Maud Martha is tamping down her rage when she is quiet or “passive”. Rather, she transforms her rage “by pairing it with an active, generative empathy” (Thorsson, 156). This isn’t for the sake of maintaining the status quo. It is for herself.

This is particularly clear in my favorite scene from the book, the chapter “Maud Martha spares the mouse”. When Maud Martha catches a mouse in a trap, the invader to her kitchen is at her mercy. She has spent weeks trying to catch the mouse. The creature is stoic in its defeat, simply staring at her without “hope of reprieve or postponement—but a fine small dignity” (Brooks, 70). This, at least, is what Maud Martha perceives within the mouse, and she goes on to wonder if the mouse is thinking of their children, their “personal regrets…the sweet delights of the chase, the charms of being unsuccessfully hounded…” (Brooks, 70). With these ponderings in her head, Maud Martha opens the trap and sets the mouse free.

In choosing to spare the mouse’s life, Maud Martha creates life. She becomes a god in a kitchenette. Brooks writes:

“A life had blundered its way into her power and it had been hers to preserve or destroy. She had not destroyed. In the center of that simple restraint was—creation. She had created a piece of life. It was wonderful.” (70-71).

Zay Dale writes in their essay on violence in Black literature, “Maud Martha does not kill the mouse, but her nonkilling of the mouse brings her intimately connected to her humanness…Maud [Martha] understands that she can utilize violent means, but she simply does not wish to…she gives the nonhuman a narrative and a creation of life” (61-62). Maud Martha, in preserving the life of the mouse, makes both a moral and artistic choice. Brooks suggests that these are the same thing.

In a way, this is what a novelist does: gives a non-being existence. Imagining a life for the mouse, Maud Martha both sympathizes with the creature and becomes a storyteller, projecting her own concerns onto the mouse: children, survival, regrets, all while both of them are trapped in the kitchenette. Upon freeing the mouse, Maud Martha exclaims, “Why…why, I’m good! I am good.” (Brooks, 71). Learning that she too deserves mercy and compassion as much as a mouse, Maud Martha is both a creator and a creation. Perhaps not a great one, but a good one, one that can look upon the lowliest of creatures, and see that they are the same. And what makes someone godlike, Brooks seems to argue, is the capacity to transform anger or frustration: to create empathy and understanding.

And yet, “Maud Martha is not bound even by her own goodness” (Ahern, 318). Brooks allows for Maud Martha to have “competing impulses” within her, to embrace the compassionate and the predatory not as opposite inclinations, but as demands of the human (Ahern, 318). In another chapter, titled “brotherly love”, Maud Martha prepares a chicken for dinner, an undesired task that a butcher would normally do. But hard times force Maud Martha to do it herself. As she works, she considers how “the chicken was a sort of person…with its own kind of dignity. The difference was in the knowing. What was unreal to you, you could deal with violently” (Brooks, 153). Maud Martha realizes that a chicken has a life all its own, something that we try to forget when we sit down to eat. This isn’t an argument for vegetarianism (though I am one). I’m sure that plants want to survive just as much as a chicken, just as much as you or me. And this is the conclusion Maud Martha reaches, as she “smack[s] her lips at the thought of her meal” (Brooks, 153). Why shouldn’t she savor the joy of eating, just as a chicken would? Maud Martha refuses to diminish her life, even as she refuses to discount the life of the chicken. It is with understanding that she commits violence: an appreciation for both herself and the animal.

Lessons in Reading

When read “straight”, Maud Martha is a simple story about a simple woman. This is why it provides an excellent lesson in reading. Thorsson suggests that Maud Martha the character “is a model for the invested reader” (157). They explain this with the mouse scene, where “Maud [Martha] identifies with the mouse just as the reader may identify with Maud [Martha]” (Thorsson, 157). I think that this form of projection to create understanding is true of another scene in the novel, one of the more overtly political.

In this chapter, titled “the self-solace”, Maud Martha overhears a white woman use the n-word at a beauty shop. At first, she thinks that she must have misheard the woman, because the beautician, Sonia Johnson (a Black woman), does not react in any way. Maud Martha considers how she might have reacted, had she been Sonia. Maud Martha assumes that Sonia would have reacted dramatically (still believing that she misheard the conversation), while Maud Martha herself “would be gentle in a cold way” (Brooks, 139-140). She wouldn’t give the white woman an insult in return, but would educate her. This reverie helps Maud Martha cope with what she tells herself she didn’t hear. It maintains her dignity, which the white woman’s use of the slur attempts to destroy.

When Sonia reveals that the white woman did, in fact, say the n-word, Sonia defends her lack of reaction by arguing that the slur can’t hurt her, because she knows that she isn’t what the white woman thinks of when she uses the slur. Sonia argues that “Our people is got to stop getting all stepped up about every little thing, especially when it don’t amount to nothing…” (Brooks, 141).

While Maud Martha is silent with shock, Sonia continues to weakly defend her lack of reaction: “What would be the point? Why make enemies? Why go getting all hot and bothered all the time?” (Brooks, 142). In reply, “Maud Martha stared steadily into Sonia Johnson’s irises. She said nothing. She kept on staring into Sonia Johnson’s irises.” (Brooks, 142).

Frankly, I don’t know how you could read this chapter and not see that Maud Martha is a deeply political book, about compensations and rage and how life must be navigated and negotiated in humiliating and degrading ways because of injustices outside of our control. The powerful moment where Maud Martha stares into Sonia’s eyes implies both a sympathy with her and a disbelief at her inaction. Brooks creates a complicated situation where, ultimately, what matters most is these two women preserving their dignity and self-respect, which they do in different ways. Maud Martha “acknowledge[s] her feelings while not feeling controlled by them” (Ahern, 322). Sonia, meanwhile, tries to excuse her lack of reaction, and in doing so, inadvertently or intentionally, justifies the use of the n-word in a way that causes Maud Martha to stare her down. Ahern argues that “Brooks…in no way advocates the condoning of prejudice, nor a lack of resistance to it. She is also concerned, however, with the sanity and well-being of her protagonist…” (322). Essentially, what Brooks is interested in is the perspective of the people racism effects, and how it effects them.

I think the reason Maud Martha has been dismissed as not being political is because of this subtlety. Maud Martha never experiences a dramatic, “obvious” instance of injustice, but small, daily moments that attempt to dehumanize her. Brooks suggests that, in these moments, our consciousness, our soul, is the greatest defense we have. Maud Martha cannot be diminished because she refuses to let that happen. It’s not fair that she must go through life like this, nor does Brooks argue that this is triumphant and worth celebrating. She remains ambivalent, careful, and fully aware.

Conclusion

Nowhere is this nuance and ambivalence better illustrated than in the novella’s concluding chapter, “back from the wars!” On the surface, this is a happy ending: Maud Martha’s brother, Harry, has returned from overseas, and the world is at peace again, for now. Based on the fact that we know Maud Martha was born in 1917, we can assume that the war in question is World War II. And the reader (and Brooks, who published Maud Martha in 1953) know that the horrors the world and humanity have to offer are far from finished.

Many readers see this ending as uncomplicated, which does puzzle me. Yes, the world is brimming with opportunity, as Maud Martha wonders, “What, what, am I to do with all of this life?” (Brooks, 178). She stands in the warm sun, “in this blue air” with her daughter, feeling “that death was a part of life: that life was good and death would be good too” (Brooks, 178). It would be wrong to diminish this ending as pessimistic or solemn: it is bursting with feeling and life. But also, death.

Maud Martha and her daughter pass by “men with two arms off and two legs off, then men with the parts of faces.” The sight of these victims of war causes Maud Martha’s eyes to swim, as she remembers newspaper articles about “Georgia and Mississippi lynchings” (Brooks, 178-179). Brooks makes it clear that the world is not all sunshine. At the same time, this doesn’t change the fact that the sun, still, is shining.

I’d like to quote the concluding paragraphs of the novella in their entirety, because they are some of my favorite pieces of writing:

“But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world—or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower: for would its kind not come up again in the spring? come up, if necessary, among, between, or out of—beastly inconvenient!—the smashed corpses lying in strict composure, in that hush infallible and sincere.

And was not this something to be thankful for?

And, in the meantime, while people did live they would be grand, would be glorious and brave, would have nimble hearts that would beat and beat. They would even get up nonsense, through wars, through divorce, through evictions and jiltings and taxes.

And, in the meantime, she was going to have another baby.

The weather was bidding her bon voyage” (179-180).

These paragraphs never fail to give me goosebumps.

Maud Martha is my favorite book because it is a story of unfathomable strength, endurance, and dignity. It is a story that does not claim to have answers, merely reasons: to get up for another day, to try to live well, to save a mouse’s life. It is a story of an ordinary woman with an ordinary life: one of the most subversive, transcendent, and expansive things in existence.

Works Cited

Ahern, Megan K. “Creative Multivalence: Social Engagement beyond Naturalism in Gwendolyn Brooks’s ‘Maud Martha.’” African American Review, vol. 47, no. 2/3, 2014, pp. 313–26. JSTOR. Accessed 29 July 2026.

Brooks, Gwendolyn. Maud Martha. Third World, 1993.

Dale, Zay. “Black Radical Aesthetics of Violence and the Resistance of Being in Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha.” The Comparatist, vol. 48, 2024, pp. 57–69. JSTOR. Accessed 29 July 2026.

Leyda, Julia. “Space, Class, City: Imagined Geographies of Maud Martha.” American Mobilities: Geographies of Class, Race, and Gender in US Culture, transcript Verlag, 2016, pp. 173–90. JSTOR. Accessed 29 July 2026.

Thorsson, Courtney. “Gwendolyn Brooks’s Black Aesthetic of the Domestic.” MELUS, vol. 40, no. 1, 2015, pp. 149–76. JSTOR. Accessed 29 July 2026.