The first book by an African American poet to win the Pulitzer Prize (1950). Brooks's verse novel traces a Black girl from childhood through marriage and disillusionment on Chicago's South Side. The centerpiece "The Anniad" is a 43-stanza ironic echo of "The Iliad" transplanted to a tenement. Brooks combined formal mastery (sonnets, ballads, rhyme) with an unflinching portrait of urban Black life that no white poet could have written.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.