Why is My Brain Different

    Different races or all the same. We real cool or they real cool?

I am talking about Gwendolyn Brooks' poem We Real Cool. Here is the poem:

We Real Cool

The pool players.

Seven at the Golden Shovel

We real cool. We

Left school. We

Lurk late. We

Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We

Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We

Die soon.


    We talked about this poem in class last week and some people brought up pretty good points. First of all, Ms. Brooks is black which automatically made us think WE was about the black community. She never mentioned it though. We assumed and stuck to that. Another hint that can lead us toward that conclusion is the line about jazz. Back then jazz was a music genre that was most popular in the black community.

    This is something very interesting to me because I come from Canada and am not used to this whole race conflict. I would always see the things that would happen here with black and white people like the George Floyd event and others but I had never experienced any in person. When I got here, I was able to have a view of it by talking to my friends and interacting with people outside of this campus. Obviously, not everyone is racist and or slurs at each other but I have heard some things being said and or opinions that I had never heard up North. 

    My first thoughts about this poem, without noticing the hints about black people, were that it's about a group of workers that are very close, maybe working in a far area not accessible to everyone. I thought maybe billiard was one of the only activities there. I saw the line Left school. We as maybe they don't have the best job ever. They dropped out of school and now are working in construction or maybe lumberjack. They lurk late and strike straight because they drink and go to bed late or they usually have to work in the dark and hit the tree a certain way for it to fall at the right spot. They sing sin and thin gin maybe around a fire or something to burn some time and forget about the people they miss or forget about not being home. And they will die soon because the job is very dangerous.

    They are two different ways to understand this poem and I think they are both very realistic. We will probably never know that actual meaning but I find it fun to learn about other points of view from different people and see how our brains work differently.

Location: 501 E 38th St, Erie, PA 16546, USA

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