The version of this poem used to create this study guide appears in: Brooks, Gwendolyn. “The Bean Eaters.” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/28110/the-bean-eaters.

Note that parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The Bean Eaters” is an 11-line free verse poem written by American poet Gwendolyn Brooks, the first Black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. Brooks wrote the poem in 1959, as the nation stood on the cusp of a new decade with the Civil Rights Movement gaining steam. She had already garnered a reputation for socially-conscious verse built on solid technical ground, winning the Pulitzer Prize a decade earlier for her second poetry collection. With “The Bean Eaters,” she would build on that reputation, grounding her observations of life on the South Side of Chicago, particularly in the Black neighborhood of Bronzeville, in a mastery of poetic techniques associated with literary modernism. Some critics at the time felt that The Bean Eaters was not firm enough in its protest against racial inequality, and as the Sixties progressed Brooks’s poetry would adopt a fierier tone against racism and social injustice. But “The Bean Eaters” poem stands the test of time, thanks to the empathetic glimpse it offers into the life of an elderly couple in a marginalized community.

The poem opens by describing an older couple who typically eat a plain dinner of beans. Even though their best days are behind them, they keep going through the motions of life. While they do so, they remember their past. The poem ends with a list of items that surround them as they eat their dinner and remember.