Latest news with #Gwendolyn
Newsweek
2 days ago
- Health
- Newsweek
Mom Captures Moment With Toddler, Just Days Later She'll Be Gone
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A mom from Ontario, Canada, captured a moment with her toddler, not knowing it would be one of the last memories together. Tamara Spearing, 31, posted a reel on Instagram holding and kissing her daughter. Days later, Gwendolyn was gone. Spearing told Newsweek that she was pregnant with Gwendolyn at 26. She had just bought her first home and was working two jobs. From left: Tamara Spearing holds her toddler daughter in her arms and kisses her head in dark lighting. From left: Tamara Spearing holds her toddler daughter in her arms and kisses her head in dark lighting. @tamaraspearing_ Spearing's days were full—friends, family, healthy living and big dreams. "I had full trust in the universe and what life was going to look like for me," she said. "That was until my life drastically changed within a matter of days." Gwendolyn was what Spearing called her "pleasant surprise." While her pregnancy was unplanned, she said she quickly embraced it. "I remember daydreaming what my child would look like; who they would grow up to be," Spearing said. "For me, my pregnancy was just the beginning of something amazing, and I was so, so excited to be a mama." At 28 weeks and five days, Spearing went into premature labor—a terrifying experience that unfolded while she was visiting Gwendolyn's father, who had recently been admitted to the ICU after a serious accident. "I didn't want to believe it as I was hardly into my third trimester," she added. Spearing walked herself to the labor and delivery floor, where she was met by a team of specialists. "I faintly remember looking over to the bedside nurse, asking her what I should expect and begging and pleading for a safe arrival of my baby," Spearing said. "I told the nurse, 'That wasn't my birth plan. I don't even have a nursery at home.' "She looked at me and said, 'Hunny, there is no such thing as a birth plan'," Spearing said. Within two hours and just three pushes, Gwendolyn was born at 2 pounds, 10 ounces. What followed were months of medical hurdles. Gwendolyn was diagnosed with Esophageal Atresia with Tracheoesophageal Fistula (EA/TEF)—a rare congenital condition where the esophagus doesn't connect to the stomach. Gwendolyn's prematurity brought additional complications: brain bleeds, underdeveloped lungs, multiple surgeries, code blues (where a patient requires resuscitation or is in need of immediate medical attention) and long hospital stays. Overall, Gwendolyn spent 170 days in hospital before being cleared to go home. Against the odds, she was thriving and hitting every milestone, according to her mom. "Appointments were further and farther between; she was attending playgroups and making friends; she was learning and discovering as a child should be at her age," Spearing said. "For the first time in her life, she was able to be just a kid." Then, on April 5, their world came crashing down. "For us, it was a normal day," Spearing added. "Little did I know this day would change my life forever." That evening, Gwendolyn's heart stopped. The autopsy provided no definitive cause. Some specialists suspect a catastrophic seizure or undetected heart failure. Spearing explored genetic counseling in the aftermath but was overwhelmed by the lack of answers. "I may never know why my daughter passed, and although I know now sometimes things just aren't meant to have an explanation, I still lay awake at nights contemplating the days leading up to her death and wondering if there was something I missed and if there was something apparent; maybe I could have saved her," Spearing said. Now, three years later, grief remains a constant companion. Spearing said that she barely remembers anything after Gwendolyn passed. "I was very angry. I lost trust in the universe and I questioned my beliefs," she added. "I wanted nothing more than to wake up from this nightmare that I was living in. I couldn't understand why a beautiful, innocent soul, who fought so hard to be here, only to be taken so abruptly." Out of her grief, Spearing created The Gwen Effect, a foundation honoring her daughter's legacy. It supports premature infants and children with complex medical conditions, funds research, and offers community support for grieving families. "I found a way of turning my pain into a purpose," Spearing said. "I continue to speak on grief and life after loss as I truly believe it is something that needs to be talked about more." The foundation's mission is clear: raise awareness, provide resources and create spaces where both grief and hope can coexist. Through it, Gwendolyn continues to touch lives. "Gwen was a ray of sunshine," Spearing said. "She was born tiny but mighty. Her passion for life while in and out of hospital showed us and many others how precious our time is. She was strong and brave."
Chicago Tribune
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Gwendolyn Brooks, Chicago's Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, wrote of life's also-rans
I discovered Gwendolyn Brooks when she won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Chicago's newspapers applauded her. She was a Chicagoan, a woman, and the first African American thus honored. Recently I dug out the Tribune's story, which brought back a memory of the confusion it triggered. 'Genius among colored people, when discovered, has never gone unrecognized,' Roscoe Simmons, a journalist, activist and the nephew of Booker T. Washington, wrote in the Tribune. If so, how come my English teacher at Lane Technical High School said nary a word about Brooks? I had to check out a library copy of 'A Street in Bronzeville,' a collection of her poetry. The strength of her visual imagery matched scenes framed by the windshield of a truck I drove, after the school day. As a florist's delivery boy, I was transfixed by the well-worn buildings and lives stunted by poverty I passed en route to Bronzeville's hospitals and funeral parlors. Brooks wrote in 'of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery': 'Drive through Forty-Seventh Street Underneath the L And Northwest Corner Prairie That he loved so well, Don't forget the Dance Halls— Warwick and Savoy, Where he picked up his women, where He drank his liquid joy.' Until the later part of her career, Brooks didn't write with the hectoring pen of a reformer. She was animated by sympathy for life's also-rans. Especial those who knew they were. In a poem subtitled 'The Pool Players. Seven at the Golden Shovel,' she wrote: 'We real cool. We Left school. We. Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We jazz June. We Die soon.' Well past her childhood, Brooks witnessed poverty's corrosion of ambition and hope. When a Sun-Times reporter called with the news that she'd won a Pulitzer, the lights in her flat were turned off. The electricity bill hadn't been paid. Her father's wedding gift to her mother was a bookcase for a set of 'The Harvard Classics.' He wanted their children to read Western Civilization's works of literature and philosophy. His dream was to go to medical school. But David Anderson Brooks dropped out after one year to support his wife, and then Gwendolyn and her brother. With some combination of self-fulfillment and wanting to set an example for his children, her father continued to read medical books, and offer advice to the sick and injured with whom he came in contact. Though a janitor for McKinley Music Co., 'He could spread the American flag in wide loud clean magic across the front of our house on the Fourth of July and Decoration Day,' Brooks recalled in 'Report from Part One,' the first volume of her autobiography. Her mother was proud of the poems Gwendolyn started writing when she was 6. 'You're going to be the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar,' her mother would say, comparing Gwendolyn to a Black poet who gained widespread recognition in the late 19th century. She had her daughter show her poems to Langston Hughes when the poet and journalist read his own at the church the Brooks family attended. 'She's the one who sent you all those wonderful poems,' Gwendolyn's mother told James Weldon Johnson, who wrote the lyrics for 'Lift Every Voice and Sing,' afterward dubbed the 'Negro National Anthem,' during Johnson's visit to another Chicago church. 'I get so many of them!' he said, indicating Gwendolyn's poems were a mixed blessing to him. 'Keep writing! Some day you'll get a book published!' In 1943, she sent her poems to the publisher Alfred Knopf. They were rejected, but she got a letter from an editor who said she liked the 'Negro' poems. When she had more, Gwendolyn should send them. Instead, she culled from those sent to Knopf, and sent to Harper and Brothers 19 Negro Poems, including 'the rites for Cousin Vit.' 'Carried her unprotesting out the door. Kicked back the casket-stand. But it can't hold her, That stuff and satin aiming to enfold her, The lid's contrition nor the bolts before.' It was the first of a series of experiences that led her to write: 'It frightens me to realize that, if I had died before the age of fifty, I would have died a 'Negro fraction …' African Americans' experiences and expectations — indeed, their collective noun — were rapidly changing, denying Brooks a holistic sense of herself. Her parents were 'colored.' She had been 'Black.' Some rejected that as echoing segregation, others hadn't 'for where they ask is 'Negroland,' Brooks noted. 'I — who have 'gone the gamut' from an almost angry rejection of my dark skin by some of my brainwashed brothers and sisters to a surprised queenhood in the new black sun—am qualified to enter the kindergarten of the new consciousness.' Militancy had replaced integration as a goal, not just by Blacks. She had heard Barack Amamu scream, 'Up against a wall!' in a room filled with such fervor that a thirtyish white man scream back, 'Yeah, yeah, kill 'em!' 'He was calling for his own execution!' Brooks incredulously reported. Brooks noted her own subscription to a long-dead white poet's advice, or what she took it to be. She wrote that Walt Whitman's aesthetic marching orders were: 'Vivify the contemporary fact. I Iike to vivify the universal fact, when it occurs to me.' Her poem 'Riot' is about a Protestant minister who enjoys the good life. He drives a Jaguar and loves the kidney pie at Maxim's, but forgets Martin Luther King's teaching: 'A riot is the voice of the unheard.' 'Because the Poor were sweaty and unpretty (not like Two Dainty Negroes in Winnetka) and they were coming toward him in rough ranks. In seas. In windsweep. They were black and loud. And not detainable. And not discreet.' The wisdom distilled in those lines, Brook personally handed over to a younger generation. She had benefited from a South Side poetry workshop created by Inez Cunningham Stark, a wealthy and socialite prominent white woman who loved poetry. 'She, socially acceptable, wealthy, a protected member of the Gold Coast, where her black friends were sent to the rear by royal elevator boys, was going to instruct a class of Negro would-be poets, in the very buckle of the Black Belt,' Brooks recalled. Brooks did similarly when she achieved fame and financial stability. She conducted workshops and awarded prizes for students' poetry at Cornell and Burnside elementary schools, Hirsch and Marshall high schools. 'I get a more exciting response from the elementary schools,' she recalled to an interviewer. Further up the educational ladder, the inverse occurred. 'But you and I know that many a Dr. Puffanblow writes a duller piece than does Susie Butterball, the high school sophomore.' She died in 2000 as she lived, surrounded by quatrains and ballads. 'On the afternoon that Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks was dying, a few family members and friends, including Brooks' longtime publisher, protege and spiritual son, Haki Madhubuti, gathered around her bedside in Hyde Park. They read to her and recited poetry,' the Tribune reported. 'And just before Brooks took her final breath, her daughter placed a pen in her hand.' Ron Grossman is a columnist emeritus for the Chicago Tribune. His columns vary from social and political commentary to chapters in Chicago history. Before turning to journalism, Grossman was a history professor. He is the author of 'Guide to Chicago Neighborhoods.'
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Baldur's Gate 3's Shadowheart actor and her real-life partner "are finally playing opposite each other" in this gorgeous fantasy action game set in "shattered" London
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Magic-packed fantasy action-adventure Tides of Annihilation is shaping up to have a very strong voice cast, because not only is Baldur's Gate 3's Shadowheart actor Jennifer English the protagonist, BG3 performance director and English's real-life partner, Aliona Baranova, is involved too. Tides of Annihilation was my favorite reveal from this week's PlayStation State of Play. Set in a "shattered" and "once-vibrant" London (this is meant to be a fantasy game, after all), protagonist Gwendolyn is the last surviving person in the whole city, faced with unraveling the mystery of what's happened to the world, and hopefully saving it. As we saw in the State of Play trailer, she's got plenty of tricks up her sleeve to best foes in fast-paced battles, with over 10 legendary knights – inspired by Arthurian lore – summonable in battle that allow her to pull off various magical attacks. It's giving me Bayonetta vibes in the best way possible, combined with some Shadow of the Colossus. Anyone who's even slightly familiar with Baldur's Gate 3 probably recognized English's voice immediately, but as her partner points out on Twitter, you might not have picked up on the voice of the "blonde badass" Mordred, who Gwendolyn encounters in a library before promptly fighting in a flashy boss battle during the trailer. "Not many recognized me as this blonde badass in the trailer, and that's on range," Baranova writes. "Jen and I are finally playing opposite each other in Tides of Annihilation!" It's too early at this point to know what Gwendolyn and Mordred's relationship is – they certainly don't appear to be besties from what we can see, but who knows, perhaps we could bear witness to a beautiful enemies-to-lovers situation. Even if their characters are destined to be foes to the end, it's still very cool to see the two actors side by side like this – Baranova says the two are "honored" to be part of the game. Unfortunately for anyone eager to see more, Tides of Annihilation hasn't been given a release date at the time of writing, so we could be waiting a while for it yet. However, the good news is that it's not just coming to PS5 – it's also launching on PC and Xbox Series X|S. In the meantime, you can find some fantastic games to play on our list of the best action games.
