Kitchenette Building a Journey of What If?

 ‘Kitchenette Building’, A Journey of What If                        

Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “Kitchenette Building” tells a story of poverty. It depicts a place with poor living conditions that wouldn’t be ideal to anyone.  A place that smells of onions, fried potatoes, and garbage from the day before. Where many families were living together in apartments and houses that had been split up for the purpose of housing the large population. Sounds like a place where you wouldn’t get much privacy and where anybody would not feel comfortable. This is the general definition of a kitchenette building.  Gwendolyn describes a place where people are threatened on a daily basis by their dreams and life time goals because of the day-to-day responsibilities that keep them pre-occupied and steer them away from their dreams.

Gwendolyn Brooks describes the kitchenette she is living in, in such  away that the reader can easily see the conditions in which African Americans had begun to live in during the 1930’s..  Throughout the poem she continues to refer back to dreams and how the people living in these conditions couldn’t stress too much their individual dreams because of their necessary fight to care for themselves and their families. She says “ ‘Dream’ makes a giddy sound, not strong Like ‘rent’, ‘feeding a wife’, ‘satisfying a man’ ”. This quote clarifies the priorities of the protagonist of this piece. In today’s world, one can compare to the situation that is being presented in this poem, that thousands of people had to go through in that day in many ways. Being a student in college is a struggle for many. Although attianing an education can help one to acheive goals that can set them up with a good job and career for the rest of their life, one must tend to their own needs and to the needs of their loved ones along the way which might result in a part time/full time job, or they may need to take out time from their normal schedule to care for  a loved one. Everyone goes through a series of events which ultimately decides for them the kind of lifestyle they must live.

Further in the poem, the idea of a dream is approached a little more sarcastically. The author explains the happenings of a day in the kitchenette. She describes the smell of food lingering in the house and the race to the bathtub.. “But could a dream send up through onion fumes, its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes...” This quote is like asking a sarcastic question. Like, could a dream float through the onion fumes? Fight with fried potatoes? This symbolizes the reality of the protagonists’ situation, of how a dream won’t magically appear through the onion fumes. This can also send a message of the kind of person the author is. She is residing in a place where fumes of onions and whatever else is being cooked, hangs in the air, and where people eagerly wait for a turn in the bathroom, but she sits here and wonders about dreams, regardless of the situation she’s in. Brooks poses an important question by this statement: is a dream able to rise above the day-to-day stuff without getting damaged by it?