Kitchenette Building Summary & Analysis
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Question about this poem?
Have a question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
Have a specific question about this poem?
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
A LitCharts expert can help.
Ask us
Ask us
Ask a question
Ask a question
Ask a question
  • “Kitchenette Building” Introduction

    • "kitchenette building" was published in Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks's first collection, A Street in Bronzeville (1945). The poem is about the experience of Black Americans in Chicago in the 1940s, when racial discrimination forced many impoverished families into cramped and unsanitary housing units known as kitchenettes. Rooted in this historical context, "kitchenette building" presents a conflict between the hope of escaping poverty and the exhausting demands on day-to-day life that such poverty creates. Ultimately, the poem suggests that dreams for a better life simply can't survive in the conditions of the kitchenette building, which, in turn, create a perhaps inescapable cycle of poverty. Brooks vividly captures the ways dreams die under the monotonous and smothering conditions imposed by structural racism.

  • “Kitchenette Building” Summary

    • We (the residents of the kitchenette building) are defined by our circumstances, which force us to spend time doing things that we might not want to do in order to stay afloat. These circumstances make our lives (and ourselves) feel gray and monotonous. Any dream we might have seems weak and silly when compared to the commanding responsibilities of having to pay rent, afford food, and maintain a marriage.

      Even so, we wonder: would be possible for a dream to survive our circumstances—metaphorically, to rise above the sharp smell of cooking onions? Could a colorful dream overcome the stench of fried food and old, smelly trash that's been left out in the hallway, and then thrive—flap its wings and sing a song—in these circumstances?

      Even if we decided to let ourselves indulge in a dream, and if we had the time it takes to nurture and tend to that dream, to hope for something and then actually allow it to start—could a dream survive here?

      We think about this, but not for very long! The resident in the fifth unit of the kitchenette has just gotten out of our shared bathroom, so having moderately warm water left in the bathtub is our only hope.

  • “Kitchenette Building” Themes

    • Theme Dreams vs. Reality

      Dreams vs. Reality

      “kitchenette building” focuses on the struggle of the impoverished, mostly Black families living in cramped housing complexes in 1930s and '40s Chicago. The speaker paints a vivid picture of life in this environment in order to represent the reality of systemic racism and poverty, and to show how this reality is in conflict with even the potential for hope. In “kitchenette building,” reality—and all the burdens and responsibilities that reality entails—constantly threatens to smothers residents’ dreams.

      The speaker never specifies the nature of the dream being discussed; it might a dream for a better life, a bigger home, artistic success, or simply a brief, restful escape from the concerns of daily life. Whatever this dream entails, however, the speaker implies that it would seem frivolous, delicate, and out of place in the drab environment of a kitchenette building. The poem contrasts the colorful nature of the dreams (metaphorically described as “white and violet”) with the buildings’ residents, who are “grayed in and gray.” All this “gray” suggests that the drudgery and monotony of the residents’ lives are hardly conducive to colorful flights of fancy.

      The poem also contrasts the “giddy”—silly, happy, bubbly—sound of the word “dream” itself with the “strong” sounds of words like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” and “satisfying with a man.” This comparison implies that the demands of daily life overpower dreams. A “giddy” dream seems all the more trivial in the face of more pressing concerns like paying rent, feeding a family, and maintaining a marriage.

      Even if one could manage to drum a dream here, the speaker wonders if that dream could survive the circumstances imposed by the kitchenette building (and thus, in a broader sense, the circumstances imposed by life in poverty). The speaker suggests that a delicate dream is likely not able to “fight” or “sing” through the stench of reality (the kitchenette building’s “garbage ripening” and “onion fumes”). The speaker also wonders how anyone would “keep [a dream] clean” in this environment, with the implication being that the reality of life here taints or dirties even the most pristine hopes (and perhaps that people must compromise on and sacrifice their dreams just to get by). A dream, the speaker suggests, requires the kind of warmth and gentle nurturing that life in poverty simply doesn't grant time for.

      The speaker's reverie is itself cut short by the bathroom suddenly becoming available—meaning the reality of life in a cramped, impoverished world directly interferes with her dreaming about dreaming. All the speaker can hope for in the end is “lukewarm” water (water that's not even fully warm). For those living under the weight of poverty, the poem implies, the only dreams that survive are necessarily humble; lofty hopes are out of reach.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 2-3
      • Lines 4-10
      • Lines 11-12
      • Line 13
    • Theme The Cycle and Dehumanization of Poverty

      The Cycle and Dehumanization of Poverty

      “kitchenette building” illustrates how racism and oppression have hindered Black communities’ upward mobility in society. The poem is rooted in the historical context of Chicago’s kitchenette buildings, which some landlords split up into cramped, often unsanitary units for entire families. Thanks to the de facto segregation and discriminatory housing practices at the time, many Black families were pushed into these dismal living situations. By illustrating the impossibility of hanging onto dreams in such an environment—including dreams of a better life—the poem shows how society keeps Black communities trapped in a potentially inescapable cycle of poverty.

      Beginning the poem with the plural "we," the speaker implies that the inability to break free from this world has nothing to do with an individual lack of will or imagination. Instead, the problem is that residents lack the resources (money, time) and agency to escape dehumanizing circumstances. In fact, the speaker implies that kitchenette residents’ entire lives are defined by those circumstances.

      For example, the speaker describes the residents as “grayed in and gray.” This intimately connects residents to the dreary monotony of the kitchenette building itself, as does the speaker’s claim they are merely “things of,” or belong to, “dry hours and the involuntary plan.” The word “involuntary” further establishes the lack of control that the residents have over their lives, while "things" reflects the way that poverty robs people of their individuality and humanity (and, it follows, their ability to envision a better life).

      In the last stanza, the speaker even refers to another resident simply as “Number Five” in reference to their unit number in the building—again indicating that people’s identities have become inextricable from their circumstances, which, again, are ultimately beyond their control. To that end, when the speaker wonders if a dream could rise up through the “onion fumes” and fight with “fried potatoes” and “yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,” these references implicate the kitchenette building itself in the dream’s struggle to survive. In other words, any dream in this world is not fighting against people, but rather against an environment created through racism and poverty.

      Even if people could dream a way out of such a world, the speaker implies that people simply don't have the time or resources it takes to nurture that dream. They lack the "time" and resources to provide the metaphorical warmth and care a dream requires to grow and thrive. Any dream residents may have—from owning a business to becoming an artist—thus gets squashed by the stark reality of life in cramped poverty. And without dreams, the poem implies, people will never be able to escape that reality.

      Where this theme appears in the poem:
      • Lines 1-13
  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Kitchenette Building”

    • Lines 1-2

      We are things ...
      ... in, and gray.

      The poem begins with the plural "We," indicating that the speaker is talking on behalf of a group of people. This is not going to be a poem about individual failure, or an individual struggle, but rather a collective experience.

      Given that the title of the poem is "kitchenette building" and that the rest of the poem is rooted in a domestic context (with its references to cooking, bathrooms, etc.), the reader can assume that the "we" refers to people who would have been residents of such buildings. And because the poem takes place in Chicago some time around the 1930s, readers can assume that these residents are mostly impoverished Black families.

      The poem's first line then highlights the dismal monotony of life in the kitchenette building. The speaker tells readers that the residents' lives are dominated by the demands of "dry hours," which suggests a certain dullness to their quality of life, and "the involuntary plan," which suggests that the residents have little choice in how they spend their time.

      The conditions of life in the kitchenette buildings have affected the residents themselves, making them as "Grayed in" and "gray" as the world in which they live. This repetition links the residents to their circumstances, emphasizing that they can't escape the oppressive world represented the kitchenette building.

      Also note that, though the phrase "involuntary plan" is not quite an oxymoron, it nearly contradicts itself: the residents are both restricted to a regiment (a "plan") yet cannot decide on that plan for themselves. This near-contradiction helps to establish the tension between the residents' desires and the circumstances that prevent them from attaining those desires.

      This tension is also present in the way in which the speakers refer to themselves as "things," which further suggests that they are beholden to and/or dehumanized by their environment. In calling the residents "things," the speaker also evokes the way that society has neglected and oppressed them.

    • Lines 2-3

      “Dream” makes a ...
      ... “satisfying a man.”

      LitCharts Logo

      Unlock all 304 words of this analysis of Lines 2-3 of “Kitchenette Building,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.

      Plus so much more...

    • Lines 4-6

      But could a ...
      ... in the hall,

    • Line 7

      Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

    • Line 8

      Even if we ... let it in,

    • Lines 9-10

      Had time to ...
      ... let it begin?

    • Lines 11-13

      We wonder. But ...
      ... get in it.

  • “Kitchenette Building” Symbols

    • Symbol The Kitchenette Building

      The Kitchenette Building

      In Brooks's poem, the kitchenette building represents to systemic racism and oppression—the policies and prejudices that prevent Black families from breaking out of the cycle of poverty and attaining upward mobility.

      In Chicago during the first half of the 20th century, greedy landlords began to divvy up small apartments into even smaller units known as "kitchenettes," in which entire families lived in cramped spaces and often shared kitchens and bathrooms with other units. Discriminatory housing policies forced many Black families into such living situations, which the speaker presents here as being totally inhospitable to dreams for a better life.

      The physical restrictions and realities of this building—its dismal colors, strong odors, and cramped quarters—represent the ways that society oppresses people of color, entrenching them in a cycle of poverty and discrimination so deeply that they can't hope for anything more than to get by. The "lukewarm water" the speaker mentions at the end ties into this symbolism as well, representing the idea that the only thing residents can really hope for are the most immediate and humble of necessities.

      Where this symbol appears in the poem:
      • Lines 4-7: “But could a dream send up through onion fumes / Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes / And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, / Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms”
      • Lines 12-13: “Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now, / We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.”
    • Symbol Onion, Potato, and Garbage Fumes

      Onion, Potato, and Garbage Fumes

      The intense smells described in the second stanza symbolize the overwhelming, oppressive reality of life in the kitchenette building—and thus, more broadly, the overwhelming, oppressive reality of life for many impoverished Black families in Chicago during the early to mid-20th century.

      The kitchenette building is filled with the scents of domestic life, the sharp "fumes" of "onion" and "fried potatoes" fill the rooms. These smells represent the way that the demands of daily life—such as buying and preparing food—get in the way of residents' dreams; such demands are hostile towards, even "fight with," dreams.

      The repulsive scent of "yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall," meanwhile, speaks even more specifically to the dismal living conditions residents had to contend with. Just as it's hard to focus on someone's perfume when standing next to a dumpster, the speaker implies that it's hard to think about dreams when one's world is marked by negligence and decay. How, the speaker wonders, could something as "giddy" as a dream overcome such powerful odors?

      Where this symbol appears in the poem:
      • Line 4: “onion fumes”
      • Line 5: “fried potatoes”
      • Line 6: “yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall”
  • “Kitchenette Building” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Alliteration

      Alliteration appears throughout "kitchenette building," adding subtle music to the poem and drawing readers' attention to certain images and ideas. In the first line, for example, hard /g/ sounds draw attention to the dullness of the kitchenette building world and the comparative lightness of dreams:

      Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong

      The shared sound here actually emphasizes how different these two things are—how the "giddy" sound of a dream has no place in the "gray" world of the kitchenette building.

      Alliteration works similarly in the second stanza, highlighting contrasting concepts for the reader. The alliteration (and assonance) of "fight" and "fried" pits the two words against each other, evoking the way that dreams go head to head with the everyday realities of kitchenette life. When the word "flutter" then repeats the /f/ sound in line 7, it recalls this earlier alliteration. This adds a touch of lyricism and musicality to line 7, which, not incidentally, is about a dream "sing[ing]" throughout the building.

      The final two stanzas feature alliteration of the /w/ sound. Given that this is the first letter of the word "we," this alliteration subtly reminds the reader of the collective nature of this experience—that is, the speaker is talking on behalf of a group of people rather than an individual. Alliteration and consonance also connect this collective "wonder[ing]" to "lukewarm water"—the only real "hope" residents have.

      Where alliteration appears in the poem:
      • Line 2: “Grayed,” “gray,” “giddy”
      • Line 4: “fumes”
      • Line 5: “fight,” “fried”
      • Line 7: “Flutter”
      • Line 8: “we were willing”
      • Line 11: “We wonder.,” “well”
      • Line 13: “We,” “water”
    • Metonymy

      LitCharts Logo

      Unlock all 136 words of this analysis of Metonymy in “Kitchenette Building,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.

      Plus so much more...

      Where metonymy appears in the poem:
      • Line 12: “Number Five is out of the bathroom now”
    • Imagery

      Where imagery appears in the poem:
      • Lines 4-6: “But could a dream send up through onion fumes / Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes / And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,”
    • Personification

      Where personification appears in the poem:
      • Lines 5-7: “fight with fried potatoes / And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, / Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms”
      • Lines 9-10: “Had time to warm it, keep it very clean, / Anticipate a message, let it begin?”
    • Juxtaposition

      Where juxtaposition appears in the poem:
      • Lines 2-3: “Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong / Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.””
      • Lines 4-7: “But could a dream send up through onion fumes / Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes / And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall, / Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms”
    • Assonance

      Where assonance appears in the poem:
      • Line 4: “through,” “fumes”
      • Line 5: “white,” “violet,” “fight,” “fried”
      • Line 6: “ripening”
      • Line 8: “it in”
      • Line 9: “keep,” “clean”
  • “Kitchenette Building” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Giddy
    • Aria
    • Anticipate
    • Number Five
    • Lukewarm
    Giddy
    • (Location in poem: Line 2: ““Dream” makes a giddy sound”)

      Silly, dizzy, foolish.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Kitchenette Building”

    • Form

      "kitchenette building" has no consistent meter, regular rhyme scheme, nor standard stanza shape. But it still shapes its sounds and structure thoughtfully, reflecting its ideas in its form.

      Stanzas 1, 3, and 4 are tercets (three-line stanzas), while stanza 2 is a quatrain (a four-line stanza). And that makes sense: stanza 2 is the place where the speaker briefly imagines that a "dream" could find its way into the cramped, smelly kitchenette, and the extra line here reflects that glimmer of possibility and spaciousness. That doesn't last for long, though: the stanzas return to their regular three-line pattern right away.

      The poem's shape thus matches its subject: the monotonous grind of poverty, and the way it crushes dreams.

    • Meter

      "kitchenette building" is doesn't use regular meter. This keeps the language feeling unpredictable and loose, and matches the poem's casual, reflective tone. A strict meter would likely feel too rigid and harsh for a poem in which the speaker is dreaming about dreaming.

      That said, there are a few moments in the poem when steady meter emerges. Lines 4 and 5, for instance, use iambic pentameter—meaning they're lines with five iambs, metrical feet that go da-DUM:

      But could | a dream | send up | through on- | ion fumes
      Its white | and vi- | olet, fight | with fried | potatoes

      The meter here isn't perfect, but its steadiness stands out as the speaker wonders if a dream could survive in the cramped, oppressive kitchenette building. This lilting, fluid meter—classically poetic-feeling, familiar from the work of Shakespeare—makes the "dream" feel like a creative, liberating, artistic force.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      While this poem doesn't have a completely regular rhyme scheme, it does have some moments of rhyme. Here's how patterns of rhyme look across the whole poem:

      ABA CDEC FGF HIH

      Notice that the last rhyme of each stanza is always the same as the first. In the first stanza, for example, the rhymes are:

      [...] plan, A
      [...] strong B
      [...] man." A

      This perpetual return to the same end rhymes reflects the confined, monotonous lives of the people who live in the kitchenette building: no matter what, the rhymes, like the people, always end up in the same old place.

      The poem also uses a moment of internal rhyme in line 5 ("Its white [...] potatoes"). The rhyme emphasizes the contrast between the ethereal "white and violet" of the imagined dream and the earthy stench of fried food and garbage it would have to "fight" through to touch any of the kitchenette building's residents.

  • “Kitchenette Building” Speaker

    • The speaker of "kitchenette building" is a "we," a collective voice, and that collective doesn't provide much direct information about itself. But considering the poem's setting—a kitchenette building in 1930 or '40s Chicago—the reader can assume that the speaker represents the impoverished Black families who were forced to live in these dismal apartments. Gwendolyn Brooks, who lived in the time and place she describes, is likely writing from her own experience here.

      The speaker feels crushed by this environment and their day-to-day responsibilities, and the idea of a "dream" seems far out of reach to them. They're hesitant to even wonder about dreaming, and while they muse for a moment on whether they could even entertain the idea of a dream, they snap right back to the dull reality of "lukewarm water" in a shared bathroom at the poem's end.

      The speaker longs for the freedom and possibility of dreams. But ground down by poverty and racism, they're also grimly aware that they don't even have room to "wonder" about dreaming for long.

  • “Kitchenette Building” Setting

    • The setting of the poem is, as the title says, a kitchenette building: a cramped, dirty, uncomfortable apartment building common in 1930s and '40s Chicago, the time and place this poem was written. In the context of Brooks's work, readers can guess that most if not all the families who are jammed into this building together are impoverished Black people, forced by racist landlords and bosses into these unpleasant quarters.

      This kitchenette building stinks of frying food and old garbage, and it's packed with people who all have to share a single bathroom with limited hot water. It's so confined and dirty that it's hard for its inhabitants even to imagine letting a "dream" in, let alone having the time and space to nourish it.

      These circumstances, the poem suggests, aren't just nasty in themselves, but soul-corroding: living in this kind of poverty grinds people down until they're "Grayed in, and gray."

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Kitchenette Building”

      Literary Context

      Brooks published "kitchenette building" in her 1945 collection A Street in Bronzeville. The book—Brooks's first—was a critical success, and it paved the way for her much-lauded literary career. A Street in Bronzeville painted nuanced portraits of Black Chicagoans and their daily lives. So did Brooks's next book, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Annie Allen (1949), for which Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize (becoming the first Black American to do so in the process).

      A Street in Bronzeville was part of the lead-up to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and '70s, which Brooks would support and inspire. This artistic movement championed a distinctly Black style, rather than aspiring to white aesthetic standards, and grew in turn from the earlier Harlem Renaissance. The poets of the Harlem Renaissance were a huge influence on Brooks's work—from Countee Cullen, who stuck to more traditional European forms like the sonnet, to Langston Hughes, who infused his work with the rhythms of jazz and the blues. Hughes in particular wasn't just an inspiration to Brooks, but a personal friend, and one of her earliest champions.

      Written at the dawn of Brooks's remarkable career, "kitchenette building" sets a foundation of her work in its complex depiction of Black urban life.

      Historical Context

      "kitchenette building" was published when Chicago was the midst of the Great Migration, the period between 1910 and 1960 when millions of Black Americans moved from the southern U.S. to the West, Northeast, and Midwest. Fleeing discrimination and violence in the South, many Black Americans found that they continued to face poverty and racism in the rest of the country, too.

      Chicago, where Brooks lived and wrote, grew significantly during this period, as hundreds of thousands of Black Americans moved to the city. The city's infrastructure couldn't handle the population boom, and unscrupulous landlords took advantage of the situation by overcharging those who took up residence in their cramped, unsanitary apartment buildings. Discriminatory housing policies and racist attitudes forced Black people into the so-called "Black Belt," and the overcrowding often led to higher rates of illness in the Black population—and tragically high mortality rates among Black children.

      But the Great Migration brought about a cultural flowering, too. Chicago, in particular, had a Black renaissance in music, literature, and art. Gwendolyn Brooks, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, played a significant role in molding the literary landscape of the time, and "kitchenette building" is very much rooted in this historical and cultural context.

  • More “Kitchenette Building” Resources

    • External Resources

      • Brooks Reads the Poem — Hear Gwendolyn Brooks read "kitchenette building" in this recording from the Poetry Foundation. 

      • An Essay on the Poem — An essay by poet Hannah Brooks-Motl on "kitchenette building."

      • An Interview with Brooks — A 1997 interview with Gwendolyn Brooks, hosted by the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. Brooks talks about her literary inspirations and her work. 

      • Gwendolyn Brooks Archive — Explore the Poetry Archive's host of resources on Gwendolyn Brooks, including a brief biography and several recordings of her reading her poems. 

      • Black Life in Chicago — Learn more about the history of the Black Chicago neighborhoods this poem is set in through this online collection from the Chicago Public Library.

    • LitCharts on Other Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks