Gwendolyn Brooks’ Maud Martha

What she liked was candy buttons, and books, and painted music (deep blue, or delicate silver), and the west sky…

Join us for a rare reading of Gwendolyn Brooks’s first and only novel, Maud Martha—an “exquisite portraiture of black womanhood by one of America’s most foundational writers” (Claudia Rankine).

This reading, which marks the 70th anniversary of Maud Martha’s publication in 1953, is by acclaimed actor Roslyn Ruff, “a fantastically talented performer whose great gift is her ability to dissect long speeches, searching them for pleasing rhythms and hidden melodies,” wrote The New Yorker.

“Maud Martha cherishes her own mind. To her, Brooks gives the sensibility and consciousness of an artist,” wrote Margo Jefferson. “What does Maud Martha want? She wants to give shape to the varied materials of life around and inside her. The daydreams and duties, the nagging habits and treasured rituals, the ‘knots of grief’ and surges of pleasure. Her quest is to become the best possible version of herself.”