Boy Breaking Glass

In “Boy Breaking Glass,” Brooks asks the reader to reframe the vision of a Black child breaking a window as “a cry of art” (Line 1). Accepting that breaking a window may be art requires that the reader reexamine just what art is. A more traditional notion of art is that it is what happens when a person is disciplined enough to master the tools, materials, and history of their craft to create something original. If that is what defines art, people without privileges such as time, space, and money have little chance of becoming artists in the traditional sense.

Brooks rejects that idea of art by redefining art as a form of self-expression and self-representation. When the boy breaks the window, Brooks imagines that he is publicly exposing for all the world to see “his grief” (Line 13) as well as “his loneliness and fidgety revenge” (Line 14). The boy is also engaging in self-representation. Black people and children are frequently objects of art, but in breaking the window, the boy forces any observer of that broken window to see him as an agent capable of reshaping the world around him.

Finally, art may be the creative expression of one’s ideology (system of beliefs).