19 pages • 38 minutes read
Gwendolyn BrooksTo The Diaspora
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Importance of Self-Knowledge
The phrase “you did not know” (Lines 2, 4, 5) appears three times in the first stanza, emphasizing the importance of self-knowledge for people of the African Diaspora. The overall movement in the poem is from what the addressee does not know to what the addressee can and should do now that they have crucial knowledge about their identity.
The first stanza represents the in-between space enslaved people occupied as they made the journey across the Atlantic and to the Americas. The presumption in that first stanza is that before the transatlantic slave trade, those ancestors had no need to think of themselves as a continent and people apart from the rest of the world. The transatlantic slave trade changed their notion of who they were and their place in the world. Enslaved people taken from the African continent now conceived of their world as a place to which they wanted to return, especially as “they did not know” (Line 2) what was on the other end of their destination. Self-knowledge in that moment was only about looking back.
In the second stanza, the speaker describes the addressee’s understanding of who they were as in process. That identity unfolds “over the road” (Lines 10, 13), a phrase Brooks repeats twice to emphasize the unsettled nature of life once enslaved people entered routes in the African Diaspora.
By the third stanza, the addressee is “somewhere close” (Line 15) to the road, but no longer on it. The closeness of the road and the addressee’s rebuff of the speaker’s “loyalty” (Line 17) and “belief” (Line 17) shows that the addressee cannot begin to believe that there is something beyond the stasis of life off but near the road. Life is precarious, and the knowledge of what it could be is something the speaker cannot afford to embrace.
By the last stanza, the speaker fully reveals what it is the addressee needs to know, which is that just surviving their journeys in the African Diaspora wasn’t enough. What lies ahead is more work the addressee must do—must constantly do—to understand who they are. The ultimate knowledge is the power to define one’s identity.
Black Identity
In “To the Diaspora,” Gwendolyn Brooks has her speaker call for a more expansive notion of Black identity, one rooted in connections to the African continent. Brooks announces this identity and purpose with her title, “To the Diaspora,” which one can read both as a call to action and as praise. The “Afrika” (Line 4) that is the ground for this identity isn’t necessarily a geographic location, as Brooks makes clear when she has the speaker explain that “[t]he Black continent / that had to be reached / was you” (Lines 3-5). Africa is instead made up of people and their perceptions of who they are—identity.
Brooks’s phrase “evoking the diamonds / of you, the Black continent” (Lines 11-12) also makes it clear that whoever the “you” (Line 12) is, they, like diamonds, are something precious extracted from Africa and now made into something else. Brooks relies on this figurative language to represent something ugly—the transatlantic slave trade—without ever mentioning slavery. The use of that poetic diction essentially asks the addressee to consider that what is important about Black identity is not slavery, but rather who Black people have become after surviving it.
As a historical phenomenon, a diaspora conjures movement and journeys. In fact, the central metaphors and symbols of the poem are all related to the idea of a journey, a difficult one made across difficult terrain. By ending the poem with that repeated “to be done” (Line 23), Brooks implies that the work of creating a Black identity that is oriented toward Africa is a constant one.
The Poet as Prophet
The speaker in the poem may well be the prophetic voice of the poet, who is tasked with telling people of the African Diaspora about their identities and about the possible futures that await them. The poem is an apostrophe, a direct address to a person or thing that cannot speak back. The readers’ place in such a poem is to listen in and learn something about the poet or themselves.
Brooks emphasizes the voice of poet/prophet by forcing the reader to consider the efforts of the “I” (Line 8) to articulate who the “you” (Line 1) is. In Lines 8-9, the speaker proclaims, “I could not have told you then that some sun / would come.” These lines represent the failure of the poet’s imagination to imagine the future. The lived experience of the addressee outstrips the speaker’s capacity to represent who the addressee is. It isn’t just a failure of foresight on the part of the speaker that is the problem, however.
The speaker turns this failure back on the addressee by noting that even if the speaker could have articulated just who the addressee was, the addressee wouldn’t have been prepared to hear it—“You would not have believed my mouth” (Line 14). That “mouth” (Line 14) calls attention to the speaker as someone who makes pronouncements and who is associated with language—the poet as prophet.
By the third stanza, the speaker has a surer sense of who the addressee is and can be. For the first time, rather than describing what they cannot say, the speaker has “told” (Line 15) the addressee about the addressee’s potential—“some sun” (Line 19). The attitude of the addressee is polite but dismissive.
By the last stanza, the speaker is clear about what their message to the addressee must be—that there is work to be done and that there is danger ahead in doing it. When the speaker says, “Now off” (Line 20), it is a demand that the “you” (Line 18) get to that work. This line marks the final movement of the poet from uncertainty to all the authority the poet can muster.
The role of the poet, especially in an aesthetic shaped by Black nationalism, is to raise consciousness so that Black people can achieve liberation. The speaker in the poem is commanding that the addressee become a person who understands the importance of understanding Black identity in the context of the African Diaspora. The use of apostrophe implies that this is work the reader must do as well.
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By Gwendolyn Brooks
