There are obvious reasons why when Gwendolyn Brooks wrote a poem about the performance of masculinity by young Black men in South Side Chicago, she chose to set it in a pool hall. Pool symbolizes masculine competition, and has for hundreds of years. In the United States, it has long been associated with "street roughs," tough guys, hustlers, and gangsters. Pool is a symbol of resistance, of an underworld which revels in the disapproval of the establishment. We also know Brooks found inspiration for this poem by passing an actual pool hall in the South Side where a group of young men were playing at a time when, she figured, they should have been in school.
But Brooks' players are not just any tough guys. Their situation differs from the white pool players in Guys and Dolls and The Hustler, because Brooks' players can find actual refuge in the dim light of the pool hall. When Brooks passed by the window of a real pool hall in the South Side, she said she struck away any judgemental thoughts that may have entered her mind. She didn't shake her head in disapproval or ask why these boys were avoiding responsibility. Instead, she tried to imagine how they saw themselves and how they wished to be seen by others. "We Real Cool" captures the anxiety the players feel about these questions of being perceived. A pool hall in their native South Side is one of the rare places where these young men don't have to worry about being perceived by anyone but themselves (or the occasional poet passing by the window).
In the dimness of the pool hall, the young men need not lurk. Their fractured existences outside the hall as watched individuals subject to the suspicion of authority become a unified voice. The pool hall is not a public space and it is not a white space; it is a space where whatever the collective voice says, is true. When the players say, "We real cool" in the pool hall, there is no one there but themselves to challenge that notion and performance of coolness. For Brooks' players, the Golden Shovel is the closest thing to a safe space that they have. Safer than school, or outside in the light of day, or for some even their homes, where they're subject to the expectations of authority, society, and family.
