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Writing with uncommon strength, creates haunting images of black America, and their struggle in escaping the scathing hatred of many white Americans. Her stories, such as in the "Ballad of Rudolph Reed", portray courage and perseverance. In those like "The Boy ....

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.... work. Imbuing the poem with incredible lines and description, Brooks transforms Rudolph Reed, who is the character the poem is built around, into a storybook hero, or a tragic character whose only flaw was the love he held for his family. Brooks creates a strong, solid character who is more than another fictional martyr, but a human being. The Finesse she imbued in this work from the first stylized Peiffer 2 stanza: "Rudolph Reed was oaken.\ His wife was oaken too.\ And his two girls and his good little man\ Oakened as they grew." (1081, 1-4) Here brooks' symbolic use of the word oakened, coupled with the use of a rhyme scheme of the second an ....