SparkNotes - The Women of Brewster Place: SparkNotes Literature Guide

2003, 2007 by Spark Publishing

This Spark Publishing edition 2014 by SparkNotes LLC, an Affiliate of Barnes & Noble

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Sparknotes is a registered trademark of SparkNotes LLC

Spark Publishing
A Division of Barnes & Noble
120 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
www.sparknotes.com /

ISBN-13: 978-1-4114-7841-1

Please submit changes or report errors to www.sparknotes.com/.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Gloria Naylor was born in New York City on January 25, 1950. She was raised in a comfortable middle-class community in Queens, but her familys roots were in Mississippi. Naylors parents migrated from the South during the Great Migration of African-Americans from rural southern communities to large, industrial northern cities. Naylors first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, reflects this dual cultural inheritance. Almost all of the characters are transplanted from their home community in the South to the unnamed northern city that is the context for this novel.

After receiving a bachelors degree in literature from Brooklyn College, Naylor began to seriously write fiction. Although she was raised to respect and love the classics of English literature, Naylor was acutely aware of the fact that missing from the narratives of Faulkner, Dickens, Baldwin, and Ellison were the stories that reflected her own experiences as an African-American woman. Before she could break from the tradition in which she had been raised, however, she needed a model through which she could begin to filter her own narratives. Around the same time that Naylor began to write fiction, Toni Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1965). Morrisons novel, which received widespread critical acclaim and marked the start of Morrisons Nobel Prize-winning writing career, had a profound effect on Naylor. The novel not only revealed literatures unique ability represent Naylors own stories but it also gave her the confidence and authority she needed to write about the places and people she knew.

Naylor published The Women of Brewster Place in 1982 after completing a masters degree in African-American studies at Yale. The novel was well-received by critics and authors alike for its lyrical prose style and its frank yet hopeful portrayal of an African-American community struggling to survive in a depressed landscape. In The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor draws on many ideas critical to her own personal and intellectual development, including class, gender, sexuality, and general reflections on the African-American experience in the United States, from the legacy of the Civil Rights Era to the importance of faith and religion.

Following the success of The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor published her second novel, Linden Hills (1985). If The Women of Brewster Place is the first half of Naylors attempt to chronicle the experiences of African-Americans, then Linden Hills is its faithful counterpart: the community of affluent African-Americans that it treats is mentioned several times in The Women of Brewster Place. The spiritual and moral concern that Naylor brought to her first novel are recast onto a different strata of African-Americans. Regardless of class distinction, however, Naylors primary concerns remain consistent throughout her work. In her next three novels, Mama Day (1993), Baileys Caf (1993), and The Men of Brewster of Place (1998), Naylor continued to present the ideas that compromise the experiences of African-Americans, especially those of black women.

The Women of Brewster Place is a novel told in seven stories. Of the seven stories, six are centered on individual characters, while the final story is about the entire community. The primary characters and the title characters of each chapter are all women and residents of Brewster Place.

Brewster Place is a housing development in an unnamed city. It seems destined to be an unfortunate place since the people linked to its creation are all corrupt. Despite the secretive circumstances surrounding its development, Brewster Place survives for decades, offering a home to one new wave of migrants after another. The life history of Brewster Place comes to resemble the history of the country as the community changes with each new historical shift. Following the Civil Rights Era, Brewster Place inherits its last inhabitants, African-Americans, many of whom are migrants from the southern half of the United States. The stories within the novel are the stories of these residents.

The first and longest narrative within the novel is Mattie Michaels. Mattie, along with several other characters, arrives in Brewster Place from her parents home in the South. Mattie leaves her parents home because she is pregnant by a disreputable man named Butch Fuller. Mattie decides to move to the North at approximately the same time in history as the Great Migration. Living away from home with a new baby, Mattie takes a job working in an assembly line. She works long hours and is forced to live in a dilapidated building. After a rat bites her child, Mattie decides to find a new home. While walking with her baby, she runs into Ms. Eva Turner, an old, kind, light-skinned African-American woman who takes her into her home and refuses to charge her rent. After Ms. Eva dies, Mattie purchases the house and remains there to raise her son, Basil.

Basil grows up to be a troubled young man who is unable to claim responsibility for his actions. One night, he kills a man in a bar fight and is arrested. Mattie uses her house for collateral, which Basil forfeits once he disappears. Mattie, after thirty years, is forced to give up her home and move to Brewster Place.

Matties childhood friend, Etta Johnson, joins Mattie at Brewster Place. After a long life of running from one man to the next, she has arrived at Matties, hoping to find some stability. Mattie takes her to church, where Etta meets Reverend Woods. She is taken by his looks, wealth, and status, but after sleeping with him, she realizes it was all just a fantasy and that he wanted only sex. Etta leaves feeling broken, but her spirit is restored once she finds out that Mattie has stayed up all night waiting for her.

Kiswana Browne is different from all of Brewster Places other residents in that she has chosen to live there voluntarily. Raised in the affluent community, Linden Hills, Kiswana dropped out of college to live in Brewster Place, where she believes she can effect real social change in the black community. Kiswana is nervously waiting her mothers first visit to her rundown studio apartment. Once her mother arrives, the two women have several short arguments that culminate in Kiswana calling her mother a white-mans nigger. Kiswanas mother responds by explaining the origin of Kiswanas real name, Melanie, and the pride she has in her heritage. Before leaving, she secretly gives Kiswana enough money to have a phone line installed.

Lucielia Louis Turner, also known as Ciel, is the granddaughter of Ms. Eva. Lucielia grew up with Mattie and her son, Basil. Now grown, Lucielia has a daughter, Serafina, with a man named Eugene. Eugene, in addition to constantly leaving Lucielia, also treats her and their daughter terribly. After complaining about his lack of opportunities, Eugene indirectly gets Lucielia to abort what would have been their second child. Shortly afterward, however, he comes home to say that hes found a new job in Maine and must leave right away. His lying is obvious; hes simply determined to leave. While Lucielia and Eugene are fighting, Serafina chases a roach into an electric socket with a fork. She is electrocuted and dies, leaving Lucielia nearly lifeless with grief. Following the funeral, Mattie is the one who begins to release Lucielias enormous grief by rocking and bathing her until she falls asleep crying.