This year’s theme, Fine Fury: Celebrating Gwendolyn Brooks at 90, underscores the conference focus on literary artists who, like Ms. Brooks, use their pen as a tool of activism. Ms. Brooks, Illinois’ former poet laureate, would have celebrated her 90th birthday on June 7, 2007. Dr. Donda West, Sonia Sanchez and Martín Espada are joined by other prolific writers and poets of the African Diaspora as part of the 17th Annual Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ Conference.

Here, Dr.West shares her perspective on raising a child of the hip hop generation. She speaks about why she wrote her book and what Kanye West and his music has meant to her personally and to a generation as a whole. 

Recorded Friday, October 19, 2007 at Chicago State University.