"A material collapse that is construction": History and Counter-Memory in Gwendolyn Brooks's In the Mecca

   Believes in beauty
   But believes that blackness is among the fit filters.
   Old cobra
   coughs and curdles in his lungs,
   spits spite, spits exquisite spite, and cries,
   "Ignoble!"
   Senghor sighs and, "negritude" needing,
   speaks for others, for brothers. (422)

Alfred's affirmation of "negritude" does not match the revolutionary directness of the poet Don Lee (who is now Haki Madhubuti), however, whose uncompromising black nationalist stance is introduced immediately after:

   Don Lee wants
   not a various America.
   Don Lee wants
   a new nation
   under nothing;

   wants
   new art and anthem; will
   want a new music screaming in the sun. (423-24)

The introduction of the known black nationalist poet to the mix of fictional characters, especially following the intrusion of the Law, reminds readers that Brooks's reconstruction of the fallen Mecca is no poetic exercise in nostalgia. There are a number of characters in the Mecca who call for retributive violence, but the inclusion of Lee's black nationalist stance among the apocalyptic calls for bloody upheaval situates the conflicts of "In the Mecca" within the racial politics of the 1960s, as Brooks connects the remembered past to the more defiant present. As R. Baxter Miller writes, "the Lee in the poem lives at the midpoint between mimesis and reality" (164), but he occupies a space in the poem that differs from the other Mecca tenants. His apocalyptic, but utopian vision reaffirms how the struggles defining Brooks's characters are confined neither temporally nor spatially to their lives in the Mecca. The incipient violence that constantly threatens their existence is likewise not confined to the urban slum; it is instead endemic to a nation structured by racial oppression.

The apocalyptic vision of "In the Mecca" is ultimately tempered with the innocent voice of the murdered child Pepita, who is finally discovered beneath a cot "in dust with roaches" (433), the victim of hateful, purposeless violence. Her murderer is a man who too "looks at the Law unlovably," but whose hatred is murderous and suicidal. As in "Boy Breaking Glass," in which the child's "broken window is a cry of art" (438), or even "The Blackstone Rangers," the notorious South Side gang members who "exulting, monstrous hand on monstrous hand, / construct, strangely, a monstrous pearl or grace" (448), the conclusion of "In the Mecca" looks to an unlikely source of poetic expression, the poignant voice of the murdered child, to convey the urgent need to listen closely to the dispossessed. While sounding the alarm for action, Brooks ultimately speaks for the voiceless, the child who

   ... never went to kindergarten.
   She never learned that black is not beloved.
   Was royalty when poised,
   sly, at the A and P's fly-open door.
   Will be royalty no more.
   "I touch"--she said once--"petals of a rose.
   A silky feeling through me goes!"
   Her mother will try for roses. (433)

The conclusion of "In the Mecca" subtly affirms the need for active transformation, both of self and society, even if it seems too late, even if it is provoked by tragic loss. Mrs. Sallie may not be able to save her daughter's life, but her "try for roses" is an act that validates her own life as it commemorates her daughter's (Jones 203).