Essay Questions

Why does so much scholarly criticism interpret this poem as an ironic commentary on race relations in America?

One foundational interpretation of the poem’s meaning has linked the presence of white symbolism in the funeral arrangements of a little brown girl. The white roses and white candles are juxtaposed against the mother who has had to pawn her wedding ring in order to raise enough money to buy these accouterments. Key to this juxtaposition is the metaphorical phrase in which the girl’s innocence is implied by the reference to the Virgin Mary but only with the addition of “Dark” in order to institute a racial divide. The isolation and alienation from mainstream society with the superfluous description of the girl as a “Dark Madonna” creates a direct line to the poem’s title to indicate this funeral is taking place in a society segregated according to racial distinction. Therefore, that the prevalence of white symbolism is jarringly inappropriate, and this inappropriateness identifies the mother as the cause. Through the subtlest of implication, an interpretation organically arises that the mother has been moved to such an inappropriate display of whiteness because she has been ideologically indoctrinated to believe in the superiority of whites. This scholarly interpretation of the poems can be traced to the concept of “double consciousness” developed by legendary civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois to describe how oppressed classes are coerced into developing a self-identity shaped to an extensive degree by the way in which they perceived by the dominant oppressive class that inevitably view themselves as superior.

Why does so much reader-response criticism of the poem contradict the scholarly perspective by interpreting the poem optimistically rather ironically?

Generally speaking, non-academic reviews of the meaning of the poem tend to view it as the exact opposite of darkly ironic commentary on the nature of internalized racism. That is the term that developed out of the double conscious concept of Du Bois which effectively describes how the black mother has learned to adopt white society’s self-identity as being superior to her own. This more optimistic reading primarily shifts the focus on the crux of how to interpret the mother’s decision to pawn her wedding ring. In both explications, that action is viewed as a sacrifice. Instead of being an ironic sacrifice made by the mother in a vain attempt to replicate the superiority of white society, however, the more optimistic critique views it as a sacrifice made in a sincere effort to bring about an end to segregation. The choice is made by the mother as an offering of something personally valued to herself in exchange for symbols of white society to be displayed at the funeral of a black girl. Thus, the portrait of black and white mixing together in the opening imagery is to be read as a message of hope for a desegrated future in America.

What is the interpretative impact of the poet purposely leaving out the girl’s cause of death?

This poem is only fifty words long almost equally divided into two stanzas. Very little detail about either character is specifically provided other than that the mother raised the money to afford the roses and candles by pawning her wedding ring. All information related to the girl in the title is arrived at allusively. It is not known for sure, for instance, how young she was, but it can be assumed from the contest of the symbolism related to purity and innocence that she was very like pre-pubescent. Adopting that assumption as fact raises an inevitable and necessary question of what caused the death of someone so young. The answer remains a mystery as no answer is provided even allusively through context or symbolism. The very absence of any information serves to intensify the mystery. And it is the mystery that becomes the point and which points to the title as the only possible clue. It may take a full reading of the poem and some contemplation of its meaning for the full shock of the title register. “A Brown Girl Dead” is when one begins to scrutinize it more closely, almost vicious in its utter lack of empathy. A young girl lies dead at her funeral and she is not even given the dignity of having a name. She is literally just another dead brown girl with the implication in the subtext being that the details of her demise don’t really even matter. This interpretation, it must be noted, can be applied with equal but separate significance to either an ironic or optimistic reading of the poem’s text.