Idaho Commission for Libraries

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

In her poem "Wonder Woman," poet Genny Lim asks, "Why must a woman stand divided?/Building the walls that tear them down?" In these two lines, woman becomes both single, "a woman," and plural, "them." Gloria Naylor's novel does much the same; it presents the stories of seven separate African-American women, whose lives weave together to form one story. The women are old and young, heterosexual and lesbian; some have children; some have lovers. Brewster Place, the street on which they live, holds them all in one community. The place itself begins and ends the novel; it provides a temporary center for all these lives, the place they make home and the place in which they encounter each other.

In keeping with her focus on community, Naylor tells these stories all in the third person; none of the characters speaks her story as a separate "I." But we are still allowed inside each woman; we share her feelings, memories, desires, hopes and pains. And each woman's experience comments on every other's. Etta understands her friend Mattie's love and faithfulness when she hears Mattie playing her blues records, waiting up for her after a depressing evening. Kiswana and her mother say little to each other about their affection, but Kiswana understands their closeness through even such a small detail as her mother's painting her toenails to please her husband.

Strong ties of affection and care bind these women together. But they are also joined in community by loss. Every woman in Brewster Place has suffered or now suffers some loss. Some of them, like Kiswana's abandonment of her family's values, are not causes for grief. But most of these women face deep, painful losses of a home lived in for thirty years, of an adored child, of a cherished dream or the loss that cuts most deeply into the life of the whole community, Lorraine's loss of sanity, her loss of her very self, as the result of a gang rape.

Naylor is one of many contemporary African-American women who write powerfully about black experience, the way lives have been shaped, controlled, and lost because of poverty, violence, and prejudice. Yet the women Naylor writes about are not simply victims; one woman's knowledge of pain and ability to survive can be passed on to another, as Mattie's understanding and strength help save Ciel and begin her healing. Together they can withstand the pressures of loss and pain that threaten to destroy their lives.

As most of the other novelists in this series have done, Naylor offers us no neat "happy endings." Instead, she gives us two conclusions. Brewster Place itself will die, part of the slow decay of ghetto neighborhoods, and the women, or others like them, will make new homes on other streets. But the community, on the eve of its block party, survives in Mattie's dream. All the women of Brewster Place together rip down the wall stained with Lorraine's blood. Violence against women is translated into a new kind of violence that tears down old imprisoning walls and lets the women's shouts be heard out in the streets.

Suggestions for further reading

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Naylor, Gloria. Mama Day. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

Shange, Ntozake. Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982.

Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1982.

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