ar
Es
t
el
Chapter I
Introduction
Introduction
From grade school I had been told that I
had potential while only knew that I felt
most
complete
when
expressing myself
through the written word So I scribbled
ar
on bits of loose leaf and in diaries -to
hide it all away. I wrote because I had no
choice,
but that was
a long
road
from
gathering the authority within myself to
that
I
could actually
el
believe
be
a
writer. The writers I have been taught to
love
were
either
who
was
I to
argue
Dickens,
Es
t
Austen,
male or
white.
that
And
Ellison,
Brontes, Baldwin and
Faulkner weren’t masters? They were and
are.
But
inside
there
faintest whisper : Was
was
there
still
the
no
one
telling my story? And since that appeared
there was not, how could I presume to?
Those
were
enrolled
at
frustrating
years
in a creative writing
Brooklyn
College
(Naylor
until
I
seminar
and
Morrison 1985 : 567)
-That is how, started the making of an invaluable writer
for English; the oldest daughter of share cropping parents
who had
spent
their days
in
Tunica
country
in
the
Mississippi delta - a lady of guts, a woman with substance GLORIA NAYLOR.
Robinsonville,
Though
she was
she
born
in
was
New
conceived
York
City.
in
Since
Roosevelt and Alberta McAlpin Naylor decided to leave the
north- west
corner
Mississippi
in
of the
cotton
December 1949
growing
state
for better prospects.
of
They
ar
perceived that North would offer educational opportunities
for their unborn child and those that would follow. It was
coming North that provided her parents with the opportunity
to become real Americans and to see their children spend
el
their youth dealing ‘within this society’ (name 1986 : 71).
For at Mid -Century Mississippi
was very much a
closed
society, as historian James Silver called it, to those other
white
Christians.
In
Es
t
than
American
literary
tradition,
the history
perhaps
no
of
the African-
author has been
more immersed in the formal history of that tradition then
Gloria
Naylor. Few
make the culture
have
done
more than this writer to
of Black America live on a page. With
five published novels to her name, Naylor has taken firm
ground
in
African - American letters.
undergraduate
student
of
While
she was
an
African - American literature
at
Brooklyn College and a graduate student of Afro -American
studies at Yale, where she served as a teaching assistant
in a course entitled Black women and their fiction s Gloria
Naylor analyzed
antecedents
in
the
a
works
of
her
male
manner which was never
and
female
even
thought
upon before the seventies. Gloria Naylor
on the graphic
black women.
details of
Changing
the
violence
political
chose the focus
enacted upon the
circumstances
led
to
greater attention to interpersonal and familial relationships.
She gave her strong words to give a strong voice to the
abused women :
ar
I am a black female writer and I have on
qualms whatsoever with people saying that
I am a b lack female writer. What I take
umbrage with is the fact that some might
el
try to use that identity – that which is ‘Me’
– as a way to ghettoize my material and my
output.
“I
am
female
and
Black
and
Es
t
American. No buts are in that identity. Now
you go off and do the work to somehow
broaden yourself so you understand what
America is really about! because it’s about
me. (1990: 98-107).
Naylor made this statement on African-American culture and
undoubtedly it collects all her dismay at the marginalization of
Black literature by America’s main stream.
She represents fairly the emerging feminist voices whic h
are concerned with the destructive effects and aspects of Black
male sexism and simultaneously responds in several ways to the
sexism of the Black Power Movement. In the most cosmopoliton
sense she is a citizen of the Republic of literature. Her concern
with the urban experiences shares similarity in view points and
perspectives of Gwendolyn Brooks. They similarly perceive that
“oppression does not hinder the birth of dreams but it does
thwart their realization” (Ibidem). In the poems of Gwendolyn
Brooks black women generally provide a space for the nurturing
of these dreams which are progressively sent forth. Naylor’s
ar
works also reveal some formal linkages to the works of James
Baldwin, Ann Petry and greatly resemble the works of Toni
Morrison.
She was influenced by Baldwin to the core of her
el
thoughts. Baldwin contributed immensely to the migration
narratives which included the heart-wrenching accounts of the
consequences of violence on the black community and the
Es
t
gender based differences which conceived reasons for leaving
the South. Gloria wrote after the Civil Rights Movement of the
1960’s, with her thoughts profoundly under the influence of
James Baldwins’ writings. She actually completed the literary
move from the individual to the collective community and most
importantly from the power struggle between the black and
white men, she now led her concentration towards the Black
families as the unrevealed site of violence.
Naylor’s mother was very fond of reading but she was
not permit ted access to the public library as she had the Dark
skin. In a piece of her speech printed by Book World in the
month of February, year 2000,Gloria characterized that her
mother’s love for books was so intensely sincere that she would
work for extra long hours in the fields so that she could join a
mail-order book club. When her mother encouraged her to read,
Gloria always took it sincerely. And when her mother handed
her a journal and urged her to pen down her 12 year olds’
thoughts, she absorbed her advice.
In 1977, this great author read her life’s first novel which
was penned by an African-American lady, none other than Toni
ar
Morrison- it was The Bluest Eye. Though Naylor had been
physically as well as historically separated from the facts of
lynching and castration, she could now realize them to a certain
extent after she read The Bluest Eye. In this novel Morrison
el
explored the Southern assault on black manhood and its results
in the North through the character of Cholly Breedlove.
Reading The Bluest Eye had deep impacts on her mind.
Es
t
She came across a lot many unexplored aspects of her own
single personality. She was filled with a new hope and could
now see new horizons. In her own words which she relates in
her third July 1985 Conversation with Toni Morrison for The
Southern Review :
My instructor’s philosophy was that in
order for us to even attempt to write good
literature, we must read good literature.
And so her reading list included Tillie
Olsen, Henry James and Toni Morris on. I
have tried hard but I can’t remember if we
read The Bluest Eye” at the beginning,
middle, or at the end of the semester. Time
has been swallowed except for the moment
I opened that novel because for my memory
that semester is now “The Bluest Eye” and
The Bluest Eye is the beginning. The
presence of the work served two vital
purposes at that moment in my life. It said
ar
to a young poet, struggling to break into
prose, that the barriers were flexible; at the
core of it all is language, and if you are
skilled enough with that, you can create
el
your own genre. And it said to a young
black woman, struggling to find a mirror of
her worth in this society, not only is your
Es
t
story worth telling but it can be told in
words so painstakingly eloquent that it
becomes a song (1985:567)
Naylor could now see in herself all the possibilities of
becoming a good writer. She now believed in herself for
spinning tales about all she knew and perhaps about all that was
awaiting her arrival of thoughts in future.
Gloria now had realised the actual writer hidden within
her and later proved to be one of the most outstanding legends
of English literature. The mentioned statement holds a strong
support with the following statements given by these famous
authors : Brad Leithauser said, “Gloria Naylor’s is a strong
voice, and a compassionate one… ” (Ibidem:111).
Emily
Dickson who is a lecturer in humanities says about Naylor:
“…she writes - and speaks - with the solid, decided vigour of
someone who has given her subject its thoughtful due”.
(Ibidem:111).
In her novels Naylor has given the high position of
priority and vitality to the Black men and women who work
and
communities
discrimination,
ar
laboriously throughout their lives only to preserve their families
against
dismay
and
the
vicious
dangerous
odds
of
poverty,
neighborhoods
and
harmful surroundings. These unsung heroes are the actual focus
el
of the stories in her novels. She sets forth the life of these
common people in equilibrium with the legend or heroes of any
other popular stories.
Es
t
Naylor tells about herself that it was her “conception in
the South that has played the more important role in shaping
(her) life as a write r” (1985: 567) Though she was born in New
York but she could never segregate herself from her roots which
lay in Robinsonville, Mississipi. She grew up in the largest
urban centre in America but her heart as a writer, says she was
“conceived ” in Robinsonville.
Naylor’s life has been very much influenced by her
parent’s activities. She is quiet, shy and timid as her mother.
Her quest for reading and love of libraries is also greatly
inherited by her from her mother. Her parents gave her the
lessons of self-validation, independence and self-confidence.
These shaped her pers onality as an individual as well as a
writer.
In 1963, Naylor along with her family shifted to Queen’s,
which was a much more middle class borough. Staying here
increased the awareness of Naylor about racism. During the
same time period, Naylor’s mother also became a part of the
Jehovah’s Witness, thus becoming a minister. At this time when
ar
Naylor was a high school senior honor student of Andrew
Jackson High in Queens, Martin Luther King Jr. was brutally
assassinated in April 1968. Gloria was shocked because of this
event and she ultimately postponed college. Now she found it
el
much clever to join the Jehovah’s Witness missionary which
gave a message of a theocratic government. Hence, she got
behind the wheel of her Dodge Dart and took to the “dusty
Es
t
byroads leading from I-95 South, just wanting to see whatever
the town looks like wherever that road ended”.(1999:.6).
This really transformed Naylor’s personality to a great
extent. Becoming the missionary of Jehovah’s Witness brought
her out of her shyness and gave her a cause, a community and an
opportunity to travel. They even encouraged her unique and
wonderful power of imagination and very obviously believed in
her power of written word which actually worked wonders for
Naylor in future. Tho ugh this missionary work nudged her out
of her shy cocoon and also pushed her gently into travel and
meeting people, but it also trapped her in a distinct world of
hermits. This was a literary setback for her since she was
unaware of the boom of the black literature that was exploding
around her. This also segregated her, to an extent, from her own
culture as she did not realize the incredible rising of the Black
literature.
From
1968
to
1975,
she
spent
her
years
in
the
propagation of the message as the missionary of the Jehovah
witness, in New York and around Dunn, North Carolina, in
Jacksonville, Florida and also preached as a pioneer for the
Witnesses.
She
traveled
all
over
the
country
ar
Jehovah’s
evangelizing. During this time span of seven years , she
supported herself as a switchboard operator. Eventually, she left
Jehovah’s Witnesses because- “ things weren’t getting better but
el
worse” (Ibidem). She left the Jehovah’s missionary and had a
nervous breakdown when she moved back to her parent’s home.
Now she took up to the work of a switchboard operator as a full
Es
t
time job. She did this from 1975 to 1981 and also got enrolled
in Medgar Evers College to seek a degree in nursing. But most
of her time was now being occupied by the study of literature
and therefore she now transferred to the Brooklyn College of
the City University of New York. It was here in this place that
she realized her importance as a Woman and a Black American.
She realized the awakening of her identity when she was
introduced to the great black women writers here. This added
fuel to her passion and obsession to write her own books.
In these years, Naylor witnessed a distinct transformation
in herself . She found new dimensions in her as a Black woman.
She even discovered fac ts about feminism and got revitalized
with the African-American literature.
In a creative class at Brooklyn College, the professor told
all the students to act bold and send out their creative
endeavours and “say that the sample was a p art of a larger
work” (1993: 222). It was in the late 1970’s, Gloria Naylor, who
was present in the class, responded positively to the professor’s
advice and mailed her writing A life on Beekman Place to the
Essence in the year 1979. This story of Naylor was published in
ar
March 1980 while she was still an undergraduate, it was an
early draft of the Luciellia Louise Turner chapter / story in the
work-in-progress that was to become her first novel. Then she
was encouraged by the editor of Essence to continue writing
el
since it was felt by the editor that Naylor really did have a
career in writing. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in
English. Her first novel The Women of Brewster Place and
Es
t
started her graduate work in Afro -American studies at Yale
started in the year 1981. She was given a scholarship for her
graduate work at Yale and this actually made it possible for
Naylor to pursue her newly discovered awareness of a long and
rich Black Literary Tradition. Of race and relations in the
United States , Naylor has said:
I think the best way to increase racial
harmony is to get to know each other.
Blacks and whites in this country now live
in separate neighbourhoods, worship in
separate churches etc. With people so
isolated from each other, it is difficult to
get tolerance. The first step is simply to get
to know each other (Ibid em: 111).
Gloria Naylor’s novels have offered one way to bridge
the gap of ignorance and isolation. The reviews attest Gloria
Naylor’s importance in the expanding canon of American
letters. Though sometimes it is controversial but still they
nineties
and
her
ar
showcase the evolving literary culture of the eighties and
vibrant
contribution
to
the
emerging
renaissance of African American Women’s writing.
Naylor
very
accurately
addresses
herself
as
a
el
“wordsmith” (Ibidem: 112 ), a storyteller. Her novels generally
contain portions of her personal life and familial past in the
general form of names, places and also stories. Her novels are
Es
t
linked and connected with each other. She refers to places and
characters in a story which become significant in the next text.
She also draws extensively on the Bible which obviously has the
influence of her association with the Jehovahs Witnesses, i.e.
her peculia r affinity for apocalyptic images and events which
she uses in her novels. All her works reflect a moral and
spiritual sensibility. She is perfect in the creation of the corrupt
fictional worlds in which characters must find some sort of a
sanctuary to be safe.
The scholars worldwide are impressed by her work
because she herself is a part of all what she writes. Her novels
are often inspired by her appreciation of literary masters like
Shakespeare, Dante and Morrison. For instance: Linden Hill s is
an adaptation of Dante’s Inferno and in the same manner Mama
Day has the influence of The Tempest by William Shakespeare
as well as Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon . Regarding her
literary influences, Gloria Naylor says:
I have been influenced by both the English
classics-Dickens, the Brontes, Austen-and
ar
on the other hand I have been influenced by
Zora Neal Hurston..Alice Walker. So it is a
combination of the two that have nourished
me as a writer. What I like about Hurston’s
el
work is that it is lyrical, and she told the
story of just plain working-class people
Es
t
(Ibidem: 118)
Naylor has earned a reputation associated with both
critical and commercial success; she is respected in academic
circles and acknowledged in the world of popular culture. Her
best selling novel was translated into successful movies. She is
rightly recognized for speaking out the rights of women and
also other social issues.
Naylor
is
a
great
achiever.
She
won
a
National
Endowment for the
Arts fellowship in 1985 and also served as a Cultural Exchange
Lecturer in for India United States Information Agency for three
weeks. She was a visiting professor at New York University in
1986. She wrote several HERS columns for the New York Times
on topics such as psychics, dating and the popularity of the
television game show Wheel of Fortunate. She even won the
Candace Award of the National Coalition of One Hundred Black
Women. In Reflections, a piece in Centennial, she interviewed
her parents, in their thirty sixth year of marriage, about their
varying reasons for coming to New York and leaving the South.
She worked as a visiting lecturer at Princeton in 1987
ar
and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in the year 1988. She
even taught and lectured in the University Of Pennsylvania,
Boston University, Brandeis University and Cornell University.
From 1989 to 1994 she served on the Executive Board of the
el
Book-o f-the Month Club. She was also a visiting scholar at the
University of Kent in Canterbury, England in the year 1992. In
1990, she formed One Way Productions in order for her to have
Es
t
control over her books as they move into various genres and the
intention was to present positive images of the black community
to as many people in America and around the world as possible.
Culled from newspapers and magazines, reviews from
writers such as Donna Rifkind have identified her as having a
“commanding fictional voice (that) at it’s best, it’s a kind of
voice that moves you along as if you were dreaming. But it runs
the risk, as it’s worst, of overpowering the voices of her own
carefully imagined characters”. (Ibid em:1 ). In the deep, there is
something tough in Gloria Naylor which is definitely inherited
from the South. Her style of telling a story, paying careful
attent ion to the details of her characters’ lives and her
painstaking meticulousness with which she draws the places
where these fictional characters dwell, reveal her Southern
attribute. Naylor is her own person. Peter Erickson writes:
Naylor’s work provides a valuable test case
for how we are going to formulate a
multicultural approach to literary studies.
Naylor’s interest in Shakespeare neither
ar
translates into kinship nor supports a mode
of continuity, the main note is rather one of
conflict and difference…S hakespeare does
not assimilate Naylor; Naylo r assimilates
el
Shakespeare”. (Ibid em: 1).
Gloria Naylor has written till now four novels which have
Es
t
been published and she’s been working on her fifth one now.
Her first four novels - The Women of Brewster Place, published
in 1982; Linden Hills in 1985; Mama Day in 1988 and Bailey’s
Café published in 1992 constitute her quartet of novels. These
were the books she had planned as the foundation of her career.
(1994:160).
In each of her novel, a community of women emerges,
sustaining, enabling and enriching the lives of one another. All
her novels are connected with each other. The characters and
places mentioned in her first novel become the central focus of
her next novel. There is a gap of ten years in the publication of
Naylor’s first and her fourth novel and in this span of time she
has demonstrated an increased sophistication in the recasting of
a place and character. In her novels, dreams are deferred,
children see death and the places whether they are literal o r
mythical, always become a way station in the journey of life.
In an interview given to Ebony in 1989 Gloria Naylor
said:
One character could not be The Black
ar
Women in America so I had seven different
women and all in different circumstances,
encompassing the complexity of our lives,
the richness of our diversity,from skin
el
colour on down to religious, political and
sexual preferences (1989:123)
Es
t
This statement was made with reference to her first novel-The
Women of Brewster Place: A novel in seven stories which was
published in 1982 by Viking Press. This novel won the
American Book Award for the Best First Novel, the following
year. She was the chosen representative of those who “are
coming forward to take their place in the sun” (1984:64), when
Ebony touted the reigning black women novelists in the year
1984. Considering the fact that the eighties witnessed the
creation of the largest underclass in the history of Black
Americans, Brewster Place, standing in the beginning of that
decade, can be read as an augury of events to come. What held
vitality for Naylor while writing her novels was the description
of the female residents in looks and life styles. The reviewers
and critics looked at Naylor’s work alongside that of Toni
Morrison and Alice Walker, whose The Color Purple was also
published in the same year i.e. 1982. Naylor too was a fresher to
the existence of a long Black Literary Tradition. She had
discovered it herself recently and all of a sudden she became a
part of it.
The Women of Brewster Place is a novel about poor and
ar
working class women whose relationships with each other help
them to endure the brutalities of urban life. In 1989, Brewster
Place became the basis for a television miniseries that became a
regular show and it ran for one season. Both programs were
el
produced by and starred Oprah Winfrey. This adaptation of The
Women of Brewster Place for a television series, launched the
career of Gloria Naylor quite dramatically into rejuvenation of
Es
t
naturalism as a mode of narration and plot development. This
was a bold return to naturalism as all the contemporaries of
Naylor were making their way to the lyrical modernism of Zora
Neal Hurston for literary inspiration.
Naylor used Ann Petry’s The Street as her silent second
text. This book was the classic work of Black feminist
naturalism. Naylor, like Ann Petry and Richard Wright found in
the resources of naturalism, the means through which she could
indict a social structure that could tolerate the economic
underdevelopment
of
so
much
Black
America.
Naylor’s
naturalism breaks with literary convention by portraying the
rape from the victim’s perspective. She denies to point out
completely diminished lives even within her practice of
naturalism.
The naturalism of Gloria Naylor is a lyrical naturalism
which can be precisely said to have its roots in James Baldwins
gospel- inspired riffs on Richard Wrights’ Native Son and Black
Boy. Besides this, Naylor demonstrated a powerful manner of
depicting sexuality - in its varied permutations. This again
ar
linked her to James Baldwin but it also registered a more
complex though an open style of depicting the vagaries of desire
in Black Fiction.
Naylor is a writer who has chosen realism, and gives a
el
close scrutiny to the intricacies of the lives of Black women.
She draws on the tradition of the naturalistic novel along with
its objectivity about actual conditions. Her efforts as a pioneer
Es
t
in this respect have helped to make the decade of the eighties a
new era, in fact, a renaissance in Black Women’s writings.
The Women of Brewster Place, which is noted for its
portrayal of Black women’s relationships and their search to
quench their quest for identity, won the National Book Award
for first fiction in 1983.She completed this heart -wrenching
story of seven women in a seedy urban neighbourhood, just
when she began her graduate work at Yale. Her novels introduce
the privileged Americans to the struggles and sufferings of
those who will never see the American Dream because for them
survival itself is victory. Naylor gives through her writing the
exact essence of an older and broader tradition i.e. the narrative
art handed down from Africa. Her focus in this story has been
on seven women who achieve success and emerge victorious as
they stand against all odds of life. They have a strong bonding
with each other which supports them to survive even in an
impoverished and threatening neighbourhood. They finally
survive and find refuge from their problems.
The novel is a celebration of the riches and diversities of
the black female experience. It received strong reviews and won
ar
lots of awards. It entered into a literary arena that had already
heard black feminist voices like Alice Walker and Ntozake
Shange. Composed of seven stories, it interconnects the lives of
varied urban black women who live on the imaginary street of
el
Brewster Place. In this respect thus, this book is very much
similar to Pat Barker’s Union Street, 1982 which has the
interwined stories of poor urban whites in the North of England.
Es
t
Naylor has defined herself as feminist and her texts
participate in the Black Feminist Literary Movement of the
seventies and eighties. Celeste Frazer reads The Women of
Brewster Place as a counterargume nt to the New Right
discourse of Black Welfare Motherhood and single -parent
families, exemplified by the Moyniham report. Gloria Naylor
undermines the conservative stereotypes of Black poverty, by
presenting the living diversity of Black female experience,
struggling to survive in the ghetto. She explored deeply
Baldwin’s depiction of southern black families as patriarchal
institutions. Responding to the sexism of the Black Arts and
Black Power Movements, black feminist writers seek to give
voice to the silenced black women of earlier texts. Naylor’s
book The Women of Brewster Place represents these concerns in
the best manner. The intermingled lives of bright, desperate,
determined, resilient black women fill the pages of these novels
and each of them has a story of her own.
The Women of Brewster Place is the best portrayal of
poor, black, single, working mother’s, who live in Northern
urban ghettos and seek to gather for their sons the best from
ar
life. These women return time and again to a materna l safe
space whether it exists as the neighbourhood, as ritual or in
friendships between the women. Each woman has varying
degrees of access to safe space. Each woman tries to resist the
el
psychie and physical violence and economic poverty inflicted on
them by the white society and the black men together. For
instance, Mattie Michael of Brewster Place takes advantage of
Es
t
the space she finds safe for herself. And consequently she
survives to act as a provider and creator of safe space for other
women of Brewste r Place. Thus, Naylor exploits the literary
possibility of narrative safe spaces differently. Her Women of
Brewster Place ends with a vision of the destruction of the wall
by those who are confined to it. Through her stories Naylor
explores the possibility of neighbourhood which was first
suggested in Gwendolyn Brooks Maud Martha.
Naylor
has
depicted
the
physical
abuse
that
her
protagonist incurs at the hand of her father as the act of
violence which becomes the major cause of her protagonist for
leaving the South. A small description of her women goes as:
Nutmeg
arms
leaned
over
windowsills,
gnarled ebony legs carried groceries up
double flights of steps, and saffron hands
strung
out
lines…They
wet
were
laundry
on
hard -edged
back-yard
,
soft-
centered, brutally demanding, and easily
pleased, these women of Brewster Place
ar
(1983:4-5)
According to Darlene Clark Hine it should be considered
by the historians that domestic abuse is another of the many
el
“push” factors that contributed to migration. Hine urges that
most of the black ladies migrated to North out of the “desire for
freedom from sexual exploitation, especially rape by white men
Es
t
and to escape from domestic abuse within their own families”
(1991:138).
Gloria Naylor and many other Black women novelists
anticipated Hine’s call and are at the forefront of a revisionist
project that reconsiders the role of sexual violence and abuse as
a catalyst for migration. Elucidating further the social and
economic topos of the fictions of Naylor, Barbara Christian
expresses that the treatment of class and geography explicitly
given by Naylor in her first two novels is a remarkable
achievement in the field of African-American writing. Christian
describes the way in which Black progress and the creation of
Black middle class is played out spatially and explores the
complexity of Naylor’s treatment of gender in relation of class.
The first novels Naylor wrote belong to a group of Black
feminist texts that came up after the Black Power Movement of
the sixties. The role of dreams and deferra l in Women of
Brewster Place is the subject of the essay by Jill L. Mathus. The
sense of closure in the final story is undermined by the fact that
the block party that would unite the female community only
occurs in a dream. Mathus mentions that Naylor’s refusal to
ar
definitively end her story i.e. the novels sense of irresolution- is
a revision of the meaning of ‘deferral’ given by Langston
Hughes which says: “that a dream deferred is a dream alive, a
life still in progress” . (1986: xi). The work of Naylor asserts
el
the vital necessity of women -centered ritual and community for
black women .She exploits the possibilities of safe spaces for
her characters and her narrative strategy. Her safe spaces
Es
t
challenge realism as an adequate form for portraying the
experience of black women. The harshness of their urban
existence is also portrayed.
The Women of Brewster Place provides evidence of the
importance of Southern retentions for the Northern Black. The
women of Brewster Place manage to keep their dreams alive and
to pass them on in the healing sustenance they provide for their
families. The ultimate vision of Brewster Place asserts that the
process of change is painful and ever so slow, one nurtured by
existence of safe women spaces. Gloria Naylor dedicates her
novel to people in her own life who helped and supported her in
realizing her dream of becoming a writer.
A street that births several generations of
immigrant children and in her old grows
fond of her coloured daughters - is the last
chapter illustrated. Naylor’s opening of her
text with a description of a maternal
Brewster Place... (1982: 22 )
each
other’s
lives.
ar
The women of Brewster Place play a similar important role in
For
instance
-
Mattie
Michael,
the
protagonist of the story becomes the most anticipated maternal
healing space to the younger generation of women. ‘Safe
el
spaces ’ are the spaces where the black women find a voice for
themselves. Though these women are successful in finding a
voice for themselves but this act of provision of ‘safe spaces’ or
Es
t
if better said this ‘ritual’ is conducted in silence. Mattie’s role
as a healer and nurturer is most apparent in Naylor’s portrayal
of the laying on of hands ritual between Mattie and the younger
Ciel. This ritual is identified as a womanist reclamation of
divine healing and resurrecting powers. It abounds in the
modern black women’s fiction in its ancient form. Some critics
claim that the ability of this ancient ritual of laying on of hands
lead to a reborn self.
Naylor passage remains linear and is not completely
interrupting. Ciel when returns to a preverbal identification with
the mother, she does resist but heals from the patriarchal
oppression like the ritual. The dream provides such a domain
which is unhindered by time and space. The limitations of
Brewster Place are broken in pieces by the power of the women
community within this dream. Though the dream imagery does
displace many materialistic notions of resistance, it holds a very
vital identity for the vision of Gloria Naylor. The safe -spaces
provided in the Brewster Place are the healing spaces for these
women because all these women in some form or the other have
gone through either sexual harassment or racial oppression. It is
ar
their being women that they suffer from such oppressions and it
is their being women which actually leads to the formation of
this healing community by them.
Thus, Brewster Place cannot be simply addressed as a
el
space which emerged in the respons e to the changing political
and social relations between the Black men and Black women
which lead to the Black Power Movement, rather it is the space
Es
t
which helps to create that difference which actually brings this
change.
Naylor’s presentation of the Brick-wall, the fictional
urban
neighborhoods
and
her
relationships
between
the
characters of the novel, particularly – the motherhood –
everything is directly proportionate to the political as well as
the historical moment during which she writes. This text Women
of Brewster Place emerges as a Black Feminist attempt to put
forth the necessity of construction of a Black Women’s
Community and the utilization of safe -spaces as a result of the
black women’s intra racial gender-based oppression. But as far
as the relationship between her lesbian characters is concerned,
Naylor’s vision gets restricted. She denies to extend the benefits
of women-defined safe-spaces to her lesbian characters. Where
the relationships between women provide a source of safe-spac e
for other female characters, there the lesbian relationship
becomes the source of oppression by the whites and men
including also oppression by other women.
Again though the narrative techniques of Gloria Naylor
very well exploit the literary potential of the safe-spac e and also
ar
follow and contribute to a feminist literary construction, the
resistance of the women of Brewster Place occurs only in the
context of these female spaces. This serves only to ensure
survival but does not guarantee any ongoing resistance to the
el
social order. A return to the mother is healing and nurturing, but
it is alone not enough to dismantle the wall which circumscribes
the lives of these women. As the text approaches closure, the
Es
t
Brewster Place dies. But the women leave – “some to the arms
of the world that they would have to pry open to take them,
most to inherit another aging street and privilege of clinging to
its decay…” (Ibidem).
The second novel of Gloria Naylor is Linden Hills. A
critic has remarked:
Linden
Hills
dangerous
is
book
an
uncomfortable
which
pricks
and
the
conscience… Naylor has risked much by
writing such a disturbing tale…she could
loose a black audience that feels unjustly
challenged and a white audience that thinks
the novel’s hard questions are not meant
for them…But because Naylor knows who
she is, where she has been, and where she
wants to go, she dares to tell her tale and
dares
the
reader
to reckon
with
it.
(1987:81).
ar
Luke Bouvier notes the interplay and instability of
language, race, gender and geographical space in Linden Hills,
when he returns to some of the issues charted out by Barbara
Christian. According to his reading, Linden Hills itself is the
el
site of a struggle to control names and meaning.
The theme of the story of Linden Hills is basically
resistance and rebirth . A world of successful Black Americans
Es
t
is portrayed in the text. These Black Americans though have
acquired a status along with some power but in turn they have
forfeited their hearts and souls. In Linden Hills the imaginary
landscape
of
a
black-owned,
black-inhabited
middle -class
neighbourhood is very well used by Gloria Naylor.
Linden Hills can be undoubtedly called a book which
keeps Dante Alighieris Inferno as a base, regarding moral
geography, adaptation of Dante’s narrative strategy which is
depicted as the journey through hell as the main organizing
principle. It also offers an allegory which is purposely presented
to instruct and warn the Black Americans as the intended
audience.
Dante’s
structure
worked
for
the
kind
of
neighbourhood which Naylor had in mind. This was the
structure of a place where its residents sold their souls just to
fulfill a minor portion of the American Dream, which desires –
“a home in the right neig hbourhood, a marriage partner
enhancing an image and lovely children who would carry the
design further”.
There are many characters inhabiting Linden Hills. To
become a success in Linden Hills was such an achievement that
ar
it was considered as the attainment of an address which was
very much close to the lowest circle of this upscale hell. All the
inhabitants of Linden Hills contributed to the most distressing
literature.
el
accounts of black middle class existence in Afro –American
There was the pro file of her nose and lips. It
Es
t
wasimpossible to determine the shape of her
eyes, even from the side, but this was
enough. No doubt remained –she was there.”
(1985: 268).
The story is narrated through the eyes of two young black
men in the most swirling form. These young men reside on the
outskirts of this all time-desired enclave – Linden Hills. They
question the wrecked lives of better off black folks only when
because of work they happen to enter into the homes of these
people. They now realize the depth of all the pain and suffering
and sacrifices their people have lived only to get a piece of the
pie.. This analysis makes them adamant to find a better living
for themselves and to establish their community. As they move
ahead
for
the
attainment
of
this
aim…greed,
suicide,
manipulation, insanity and chaos flourish. The only target these
black men now have is to prove their identities to the society in
the most established sense.
Linden Hills was published by Ticknor Fields in the year
1985. When at Brooklyn College Naylor had quite deeply read
ar
Dante’s Inferno which actually gave her the idea to write Linden
Hills. She read Inferno in a survey course of great Western
Literature. She completed Linden Hills which she taught at
George Washin gton University and this manuscript was taken as
el
a creative thesis by an M.A in Afro -American studies from Yale
in the year 1983.
Margaret Homans explored the allegorical structure of
Es
t
the text as a work of visionary feminism. Homans compares
Naylor with theorist Luce Irigaray. She observes that as Irigaray
transforms Plato by locating a specifically female creativity
within a masculine tradition of paternal self duplication, in the
same way Gloria Naylor has transformed Virgil and Dante.
Luke Bovier notes that animating the novel is a direct
conflict
between
the
enthusiasm
i.e.
the
assertion
of
fundamental identity and the rough multiplicity of social reality.
Catherine C. Ward expresses that Gloria Naylor’s Linden Hills
has a lot of sim ilarity with Dante’s Inferno. In fact the moral
seriousness and the universal mythic dimension in the story of
Black middle -class success and its price are all showered by
Dante’s Inferno in Gloria Naylor’s book.
In
the
counterposes
view
an
of
Theresa
Goddu,
autobiographical
or
Glo ria
poetic
Naylor
-
‘subjective’
approach to history to the willed amnesia of the Black middle
class, the ‘mystic’ ahistoricist pretensions of patriarchy, and
the ‘objective’ history of the white male historians. (Ibid em:
xii). The content of her essay she has written on Linden Hills is
the tension between the personal identity and cultural history.
ar
According to Keith Sandiford the Black patriarchy
functions as a narrative locus of abiding evil and is seen as an
instance of Black American gothic in the novel. Sandiford also
attends to the multiple voices or texts competing throughout in
el
an approach informed by Mikhail Bakhtin the Russian theorist.
(Ibid em: xi).
After the great suc cess of her first two novels now Gloria
Es
t
Naylor decided to portray another series of mutual relationships,
now with an extra ordinary element of magic and myth included
in it. She focused on the strong bonds shared within the female
community and between the generations of women. She began to
write Mama Day, when she travelled to Guadalajara (Mexico) in
1983. Five years later in 1988, Mama Day was published by
Ticknor and Fields.
Through this novel she has given validity to black history
and its necessity in the modern world is noted. She has in fact
combined deftly the African past with a contemporary setting
because of which undoubtedly the novel appears to be funny and
evocative.
It’s a celebration of two things I’ve always believed in love and magic (1988: 22). - says Gloria Naylor, when asked by
a critic to express her views on the theme of the novel.
The plot of the text is set on an all-black island called
Willow Springs. It is on the south -eastern coast of the United
States, an island off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina not
appearing on any map. This was an island which had given
ar
blacks the freedom to live a life of their own. This freedom they
got in the year 1823 but the story is set not in the eighteenth
century but in the nineteenth century and a major part of it takes
place in the present.
el
The story is narrated by three narrators - George, Cocoa
and Willow Springs. The use of alternate narrators reflects and
reinforces the novels thematic concerns wit h truth and reality.
Es
t
The story is about Cocoa who departs from the island of Willow
Springs to live in the city of New York. Here, she gets married
to George, who is a northern black man. Both of them return to
Willow Springs for a vacation. During their stay at Willow
Springs things change and they all have to face a sudden
tragedy. The only support they now have to stand the situation
is the ancient inheritance of magic and herbal medicine, which
actually displaces the modern technology. The focus shifts from
the rational world of logical thoughts to the otherworldliness…
from New York City to Willow Springs, a place where across
the bridge rational thinking is no sense as the island is imbued
with the enchanting powers of Miranda Day or better said Mama
Day. The love story of George and Cocoa is presented from
three perspectives - one of George, the other of Cocoa and
another of the island of Willow Springs. Naylor has very
beautifully captured the essence of a city and a rural life. She
has wonderfully exp ressed the existence of the Northern black
woman and the folk humour. The following abstracts justify the
preceding sentence:
mean,
you
want
to
bring
back
ar
‘You
segregation?’ I looked at him like he was a
fool-where had it gone? I just wanted to
bring the clarity…back-it would save me a
el
whole lot of subway tokens. What I was
left to deal with were the ads labeled , equal
opportunity employer or nothing-… and if I
Es
t
wanted to limit myself to the sure bets,
then it was an equal opportunity to be what,
or earn what ? That’ s where the headwork
came in. (1988:19).
And humorous folk wisdom abounds:
“Just as a woman on the T.V gets up to ask
why it is that all the visitations from the
outer space have been friendly…The man
from Oregon had just bent over to respond,
but he did not answer that woman’s need.
Her husband beats her, Miranda thinks,
having seen the slight twitch around her
mouth
and
that’s
what
she
wants
explained.” (Ibid em: 40).
Naylor got the key idea of creating Mama Day when she
read As I Lay Dying by Faulkner in the American Consulate.
The theme of Mama Day analyses, examines, deconstructs and
ar
redefines the past. It is “about the fact that the real basic magic
is the unfolding of the human potential and that if we reach
inside ourselves we can create miracles”– says Gloria Naylor.
The story of Mama Day develops with vital changes. It
el
departs from the world of realism and incorporate myth and
magic which becomes the soul of the novel. About her style of
writing,
different
writers
have
different
views -
“Naylor
Es
t
presents a new picture of relations among women, of female
friendship, sisterhood, and community,” (Ibidem: xii) - says
Larry R. Andrews as he takes up the themes of folk tradition,
history, magic and nature from the first three novels of Gloria
Naylor. On the other hand Helen Fiddyment Levy feels that –
“Naylor’s increasing use of magic, myth and the elements is
shown to be an attempt to recover the vital connection and
strong community of the home place.” (Ibidem: xii). She further
says “the first three novels of Naylor basically revolve around a
Black communal life which is dissolved by the modern social
bureaucracies.
There
abundance
her
Erickson:
in
are
novels”
references
(Ibidem).
to
Shakespeare
According
to
in
Peter
Gloria
Naylor
employs
Shakespeare
to
thematize the split between white male and
black female literary traditions. It is also
done by her to thematize the split between
‘white’ high culture and ‘black’ everyday
experience. (Ibidem)
ar
He feels that Naylor has revised The Tempest in order to create
a Black Female Prospero. On the same context and on the use of
precursor texts, James Robert Saunders says that – “though this
strategy gives a tragic resonance to the work of Naylor but the
el
level of hope goes much higher in her works, higher than even
the originals . ” (1972: xii)
As far as the story of Willow Springs is concerned, it
Es
t
moves this novel into the mythic realm. If not understandable
then at least the suspending belief is acceptable. Through this
novel she gives instructions on how to listen. Every word
mentioned in the story has several meanings that keep changing
according to different contexts. In fact, it will not be wrong to
say that the real stories of Naylor are hidden in the sense in
which she uses each word. Thus, she creates a world of it’s own
with her words. Undoubtedly, this novel Mama Day happens to
be a large novel in every aspect- from its story to the selection
of its words. It’s a masterpiece by Naylor.
The next book that Naylor wrote was Baileys Cafe- a
novel which could fit any where in the world with no particular
geographical or physical restriction. The story of the novel
explores female and male sexual identity and the female
sexuality.
Bailey’s Café is the fourth novel by Naylor and it
completes the quartet of her establishment as a strenuous writer.
Her great sense of linking her first story with the second novel
is joyfully unique. She generally uses two devices to create a
sensible link from the story of one novel to the other. Firstly,
ar
she develops a character or a situation referred to in a previous
novel and secondly, she refers to Shakespeare. The best instance
can be taken from Mama Day, her third novel which delivers the
birth of George at Bailey’s Café which is her fourth novel,
el
though the name of George (including his reference and
importance in the story) is mentioned only before the last two three pages of the novel.
Es
t
Bailey’s Café was published in 1992 by Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich. The basic essence of the story is the way in which
the word whore has been used against women, rather to
manipulate female sexual identity. The story is about some
people who find a café - Bailey’s Café. The narration is done by
the café’s cook and manager. The structure of the story is
lyrical. This lyrical language gives the effect of no less than
jazz and blues. The songs mentioned are sung by the characters
themselves and in turn empower them to generate the hope for a
living.
The novel is a beautiful creation and at many places
tastes like the Canterbury Tales. Harry Bailey was the host of
Chaucer at Tabard Inn and the resemblance can be clearly seen
with the narrators of Naylor’s Bailey Café. The characters
narrate
themselv es
their
stories
of
shattered
hopes
and
deteriorated dreams.
As presented in Naylor’s previous works too, Bailey’s
Café also narrates stories of down and out women. It depicts
relation with The Women of Brewster Place which is the best
example of her works on women. In Naylor’s novels the women
ar
characters always hold the pivot importance. Their struggles and
sufferings are presented with deep experiences. The legacy
continues in all her novels. Men are presented as great failures
and
brutal
personalities
who
always
have
exploited
the
el
existence of women identity and have been hampering the
growth of women self-reliance. Instances and characters from
her novels are simply enough to prove the fact – from the heart
Es
t
wrenching examples of brutal rapists and of the toped Ben in
Women of Brewster Place along with the unsuccessful effort
making Lester and Willie in the Linden Hills to George in Mama
Day. All of these together present the uncertain male characters
in the stories of Gloria Naylor.
But
very
surprisingly
in
Bailey’s Café, where the story nears it’s end, Naylor provides a
positive mode of masculinity is but it is again included with a
major tinge of humour because the man capable of this
masculinity is call Miss Maple. He also puts on women attire.
However, Naylor insists that this character of Miss Maple is not
created
to
represent
any
sexual
ambiguity
or
gender
indeterminancy but the readers need to be convinced personally.
Bailey’s Café is an interesting novel. The story revolves
around the Café- Bailey’s Café with regular support from the
characters in the story – the visitors and of course the owner of
the café. The owner is a man full of insight and happiness. His
excellent humour supports him in times of distress and he
merrily sings through all the pinching portions of his life. He
happened to buy a café by the name of Bailey – Bailey’s Café
ar
and decides never to change the sign of it. The visitors often
address him by this name which is actually not his. Throughout
the story people call him Bailey - he never corrects them,
perhaps! He, has now got used to be called by this name.
el
Bailey’s Café is a novel in which Naylor has interwoven
life portraits. It is a restaurant which can better be called a
“halfway house” as it represents the belief that the universe
Es
t
does care for individuals but at the same time provides the
evidence that it does not really care. Whenever someone is
disappointed or happens to be hopeless, he somehow reaches
Bailey’s Café. Here, the customers are provided with indifferent
food and as far as the weekends are concerned - anything desired
is available to them with time passing at a person’s own whims.
Naylor is an accomplished author at giving world
literature an African -American spin. Her works clearly pose the
fact- Mama Day
of Naylor took much from The Tempest by
William Shakespeare, while her Linden Hills had clear and
bright inspiration from Inferno of Dante. Many characteristic
highs and lows are offered in Bailey’s Café just as in Women o f
Brewster Place which is a prize winning novel of 1983. Naylor
had emphasized always on listening and she gives instructions
on how to listen. Such instruction is given in her Bailey’s Café
in the beginning of the novel. The words act as symbols for
music - for instance- “there’s a whole set to be played here if
you want to stick around and listen to music ”. (1992:4). She has
beautifully expressed through her works that this world is a jam
and its players are mere instruments upon the stage. Most
ar
stories of Naylor are around a jazz set and presented as plays.
The seven female characters from her Women of Brewster
Place can be noticed wandering somewhere near Bailey’s. A
very simple logic is presented, that - “people who need it
el
(Bailey’s Café) will always be able to find it ” because all who
become hopeless finally find a gratifying relaxation at the café.
Naylor had already introduced the café in Mama Day but
Es
t
brought it in the spotlight through her fourth novel. The café
plays a special role in the lives of all the characters who
assemble here. They all either tell or think of their stories here,
which is told in a variety of voices, at times of Bailey, the other
times of the customers and rest of the times, as a third - person
narration along with the beautiful blend of historical and
personal data and the beauty expressed —“this summer the talk
is of Dewey’s upcoming election and Eve” or “cascades of light
flowing in breaking up, and rolling like fluid diamonds over the
worn tile…it went on for hours” (Ibidem).
Gloria Naylor’s novels are driven by her characters.
Through her pen they sip life and make the reader realize their
identities. The basic plot as decided by Naylor in the very
beginning changes automatically as the characters begin to
develop because after they become the real people, they take
their own decisions and Naylor simply has no other option than
to follow them. The author says that she heartily respects the
characters conceived by her mind and heart. Her characters
assert themselves. She says that characters in a book not yet
written appear to her and many times it takes long hours and
ar
separate stories when Naylor actually decides what to do with
them. An example in her own words :
..one image that kept haunting me even
el
beforeI finished Linden Hills: a woman
carrying a dead male baby through the
woods to this old woman. I didn’t know
Es
t
why she was carrying the dead baby, but I
knew her name because the old lady said,
‘Go home, Bernice. Go home and bury your
child.” (1985: 225).
It was only a few many years later that while working on Mama
Day it occurred to the author that Bernice’s baby, the one she
had gone to such extremes to conceive was now about to die.
While making her psychic revelations, as she calls it, she says,
though she is not a slave to her suddenly occurring images but
she does feel obliged to honour these images.
She even expresses her disappointment and compulsions.
Naylor feels she has to do a lot many things for her characters
in which she personally is not very much interested. She gives
the example of George in Mama Day. He turns out to be a
football fan and for granting him the real feel of his favourite
game, Naylor had to do a great deal of “research on a sport that
did not interest her”. (1988: 07) Then, about Willa Prescott of
Linden Hills who came out of that basement with her dead child
ar
prepared to clean the house, she unpleasantly quotes:
..what that woman finally came to after that
whole travail was that she was a goodwife
and a good mo ther and she could go
el
upstairs and claim that identity. That is not
what I thought Willa would do…but Willa
Es
t
was Willa. (1985: 230).
Though Naylor always creates certain outlines, it turns out
no longer useful because her stories get much deeper than she
expects in the very beginning. As for her, she sees herself as a
filter through which her characters come to life. (Ibidem: 225).
About her fifth novel which came in 1998, after Bailey’s Café,
Gloria Naylor states:
Fifteen years ago I wrote The Women of
Brewster Place and whenever I travelled
and spoke publicly about the book, I
inevitably got the question, ‘where are the
men?’ This always struck me as curious
since I thought the title of the novel was
self -evident. But what people were really
asking was- ‘where is the rest of the story?’
Or should I say, the other side of the story!
It has taken me these many years to decide
finally that I wanted to give the men who
had appeared brieflyin ‘The Women’ a
ar
voice of their own. Like many in this
country I was profoundly moved by the
Million Man March and the images of all
those black men calling themselves to task,
el
promising to return home and be better
citizens by concentrating on being better
fathers and brothers. The March provided
Es
t
an alternative to the popular media image
of the troubled black man. In The Men of
Brewster Place, the women are still present
but they take a back seat as I look at these
men in all their complexity, and in their
relationships
to
their
families,
their
community. But above all, I wrote The Men
of Brewster Place as a testament to the
hidden
majority,
men
like
my
father
who worked hard all of their lives, who
struggled to keep their homes together
against incredible odds and who remained
even after their deaths unsung, unknown.
(1988:5).
Undoubtedly, it can be easily concluded that this fifth
novel of Naylo r – The Men of Brewster Place published by
Hyperion, returns to a familiar territory. Naylor has revisited
the neighbourho od of her first book The Women of Brewster
ar
Place with only a shift of focus and point of view. Just as the
story of seven women of the Brewster Place, this story revolves
around the seven men of Brewster Place. The format of telling
individual stories is again repeated by Naylor. All the men of
el
this book have already embedded their introduction in the minds
of the readers in the first novel of Naylor itself, except of
course Brother Jerome who is completely new to Brewster
Es
t
Place. These men now enjoy the focus of the author through th is
story. They were presented in blunt roles in the Women of The
Brewster Place but in Men of Brewster Place they are quite
impressively presentable with deeper personalities since they
add real meaning to the lives of their women. Their individual
relatio nship s with their women are now painted on a larger
canvass.
Though
there
is
no
particular
community
of
men
emerging in the story yet, they are treated with the same dignity
and compassion by the author as in the women of Brewster
Place are treated. In The Women of Brewster Place, men were
sheer dramatic devices to bring conflict of any sort into the
lives of women. They were none but antagonists for the women.
But in Men of Brewster Place they have been developed as
characters and brought to the center stage. Now the story
focuses on the other residents of this deteriora ted urban housing
project. The female characters from The Women of Brewster
Place enjoy roles in this story too but here their importance is
restricted only to the background of the main scene. As the
women celebrated victorious sense of community at their special
ar
block party, here the men collect at the barbershop. A world of
despair and glory is highlighted. The challenges in the lives of
the black men in their families and commu nities are stressed
upon. For these men, the metaphorical day of The Women of
el
Brewster Place is reversed. For them Brewster Place begins at
“dusk” and ends by promising “dawn”. The story starts with the
same effect, end of the day and opening of the dusk, which
Es
t
indicates the end of bad times for the Men of Brewster Place.
Ben tells the reader – “ it always feels like dusk on Brewster
Place”.
The Men of Brewster Place is a story of men who are
very different from each other. They possess differen t targets
and
dreams.
This
discrimination
of
thoughts,
aims
and
ambitions, naturally has compelled all these men to stay
desolated . Each man is isolated with his personal world. Abshu
is a reminder of this loneliness: “ he will leave this street to
walk into a rising sun, one man against the dawning of the
inevitable ”. He is a soldier who waits for the dawn. He is a nice
man who has fought the fight that Langston Hughes in his poem
wanted for his languishing God to : “get up and fight /like a
man”. As the sto ry nears its end the God portrayed by Langston
Hughes is restored to his Biblical position and he does the
prayer taught by Jesus –“Our father who art in heaven”. .How
the Gracia Girls Lost Their Accents and Yo !, appreciates The
Women Of Brewster Place :
..finally , what all of us who loved Gloria
ar
Naylor’s The Women Of Brewster Place
were waiting for: the stories of the Men of
Brewster
Place!
In
this
elegantly
constructed book, we hear the voices of
el
men struggling to understand themselves
and the women in their lives. Gloria Naylor
gives us the other half of the story and so
a
fuller,
more
comprehensive
Es
t
creates
vision, not just of Brewster Place but of the
human heart. (1998: 67)
The Men of Brewster Place have a more positive effect of
women in their lives than the women have by the men. The
characters in the novel reflect the spirit of loneliness as
mentioned in the poems by Langston Hughes. Naylor has used
his poems in the epigraph, which is divided into two parts - the
first part is a series of three questions of Hughes’ poem which
are delivered by an individual male voice who wants to know
why his loneliness, song and dream should be “deferred
overlong?” (1998:179). The vital part is the singular voice
instead of the community present among the wo men characters
of Naylor. The title of the poem – Tell me demands an answer
but it is not provided. The second part of the epigraph also has a
short poem by Langston Hughes, - A Christian Country, to make
a statement about a distant and drunk God who should
‘fight/like a man’ .
The story of Men of Brewster Place is crafted richly, it is
ar
pacifiying and ends with a hope. The black man’s blues is the
pulse of the story. The last offers a possible prediction of
Naylor’s future direction- “the music plays on…and on….” The
Women of Brewster Place has seven different stories with a
musical
scale.
The
Women
el
common
of
Brewster
Place
“celebrates the female spirit and ability to transcend and also to
give a microcosm of black women in America…Black women
Es
t
who are faced by a wall of racism and sexism”. (1988:57).
Naylor’s Linden Hills also has seven stories which are
presented gracefully and quickly. A brave new world is explored
in Naylor’s Mama Day which is better known for its celebration
of love and supernatural effects. A relationship and silent
conversation between the dead and alive is depicted in the novel
along with the element of romance. Again in the next novel,
Bailey’s Café, the story of loneliness and sufferings, shattered
dreams and desirable hopes is presented with a proper place for
all the characters from the other novels to take rest and relax for
a few moments. This place is the café – Bailey’s Café.
In her quartet of her novels – The Women of Brewster
Place, Linden Hills, Mama day, and Bailey’s Café, she provides
stories in octaves, themes in refrain and characters in repetition.
Even in her fifth novel The Men of Brewster Place, the tradition
has
continued
including
the
pattern
of
character
and
geographical connection.
Naylor’s each of the four novels was to be a voice that
represents some part of the Black community. She expresses
that to be Black in America is a political construct. She further
ar
says- “ we have yet to feel within this country that we are
home”. She portrays her characters in different colours and the
description goes as “nutmeg, ebony, saffron, gold, cinnamon
red, nut brown, smoky caramel” and many such other words
el
which actually happen to be an experience which was awaited
by the other writers for so long. Her efforts are appreciable in
the field of literature, particularly Afro -American literature and
Es
t
full of boldness too. Her pen is her strength which continues to
empower her work, life and personality.