“The Bean Eaters” takes place in the titular couple’s “rented back room” (11). Brooks provides a plethora of material details that allow readers to picture the room, with its table made of “plain and creaking wood” (3) on which sit chipped dishes and tin utensils. Though no explicit mention is made of where this back room is located, it presumably belongs to Bronzeville, the Black community on the South Side of Chicago on which Brooks based several of her poetry collections. Rather than focusing on the world outside of the room, Brooks enumerates the specific objects within it that surround the older couple as they lean over their dinner of beans. The room is “full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes” (11). Each of these items suggests a plethora of possibilities about the Bean Eaters’ shared life. Some of them...