Bellinelli, director, RTSJ-Swiss Television, producer, A Conversation with Gloria Naylor on In Black and White: Six Profiles of African American Authors, (videotape), California Newsreel, 1992. http://www.newsreel.org/films/inblack.htm. . Etta Mae Johnson and Mattie Michael grew up together in Rock Vale, Tennessee. She tries to protect Mattie from the brutal beating Samuel Michael gives her when she refuses to name her baby's father. Essays, poetry, and prose on the black feminist experience. William Brewster/Place of burial. According to Stoll in Magill's Literary Annual, "Gloria Naylor is already numbered among the freshest and most vital voices in contemporary American literature.". There were particular challenges for Naylor in writing "The Men of Brewster Place.". Mattie's journey to Brewster Place begins in rural Tennessee, but when she becomes pregnant she leaves town to avoid her father's wrath. The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, The English Language Institute of America, 1975. As a result of their offenses toward the women in the story, the women are drawn together. She assures Mattie that carrying a baby is nothing to be ashamed about. "Although I had been writing since I was 12 years old, the so-called serious writing happened when I was at Brooklyn College." But when she finds another "shadow" in her bedroom, she sighs, and lets her cloths drop to the floor. Because the victim's story cannot be told in the representation itself, it is told first; in the representation that follows, that story lingers in the viewer's mind, qualifying the victim's inability to express herself and providing, in essence, a counter-text to the story of violation that the camera provides. In her representation of violence, the victim's pain is defined only through negation, her agony experienced only in the reader's imagination: Lorraine was no longer conscious of the pain in her spine or stomach. Cora Lee does not necessarily like men, but she likes having sex and the babies that result. "The Block Party" tells the story of another deferred dream, this one literally dreamt by Mattie the night before the real Block Party. As Naylor disentangles the reader from the victim's consciousness at the end of her representation, the radical dynamics of a female-gendered reader are thrown into relief by the momentary reintroduction of a distanced perspective on violence: "Lorraine lay pushed up against the wall on the cold ground with her eyes staring straight up into the sky. The story's seven main characters speak to one another with undisguised affection through their humor and even their insults. He implies that the story has a hopeless ending. Linda Labin asserts in Masterpieces of Women's Literature, "In many ways, The Women of Brewster Place may prove to be as significant in its way as Southern writer William Faulkner's mythic Yoknapatawpha County or Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. Explored Male Violence and Sexism Introduction Cora Lee loves making and having babies, even though she does not really like men. Their dreams, even those that are continually deferred, are what keep them alive, continuing to sleep, cook, and care for their children. He is said to have been a And Naylor takes artistic license to resurrect Ben, the gentle janitor killed by a distraught rape victim, who functions as the novel's narrator. For Further Study In her delirium and pain she sees movement at the end of the alley, and she picks up a brick to protect herself She provides shelter and a sense of freedom to her old friend, Etta Mae; also, she comes to the aid of Ciel when Ciel loses her desire to live. Black American Literature Forum, Vol. ". With prose as rich as poetry, a passage will suddenly take off and sing like a spiritual Vibrating with undisguised emotion, The Women of Brewster Place springs from the same roots that produced the blues. As Naylor's representation retreats for even a moment to the distanced perspective the objectifying pressure of the reader's gaze allows that reader to see not the brutality of the act of violation but the brute-like characteristics of its victim. Even though the link between this neighborhood and the particular social, economic, and political realities of the sixties is muted rather than emphatic, defining characteristics are discernible. They will not talk about these dreams; only a few of them will even admit to having them, but every one of them dreams of Lorraine, finally recognizing the bond they share with the woman they had shunned as "different." But their dreams will be ended brutally with her rape and his death, and the image of Lorraine will later haunt the dreams of all the women on Brewster Place. "The Men of Brewster Place" include Mattie Michael's son, Basil, who jumped bail and left his mother to forfeit the house she had put up as bond. Ben belongs to Brewster Place even before the seven women do. WebMattie uses her house for collateral, which Basil forfeits once he disappears. It is essentially a psychologica, Cane Naylor's novel is not exhortatory or rousing in the same way; her response to the fracture of the collective dream is an affirmation of persistence rather than a song of culmination and apocalypse. After dropping out of college, Kiswana moves to Brewster Place to be a part of a predominantly African-American community. In other words, he contends in a review in Freedomways that Naylor limits the concerns of Brewster Place to the "warts and cankers of individual personality, neglecting to delineate the origins of those social conditions which so strongly affect personality and behavior." The first climax occurs when Mattie succeeds in her struggle to bring Ciel back to life after the death of her daughter. They will tear down that which has separated them and made them "different" from the other inhabitants of the city. Basil and Eugene are forever on the run; other men in the stories (Kiswana's boyfriend Abshu, Cora Lee's shadowy lovers) are narrative ciphers. While the women were not literally born within the community of Brewster Place, the community provides the backdrop for their lives. To escape her father, Mattie leaves Tennessee to stay with her friend, Etta Mae Johnson, in Asheville, North Carolina. Cora Lee has several young children when Kiswana discovers her and decides to help Cora Lee change her life. Fannie speaks her mind and often stands up to her husband, Samuel. Hairston, however, believes Naylor sidesteps the real racial issues. WebThe Women of Brewster Place (TV Mini Series 1989) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. Lorraine's inability to express her own pain forces her to absorb not only the shock of bodily violation but the sudden rupture of her mental and psychological autonomy. She imagines that her daughter Maybelline "could be doing something like this some daystanding on a stage, wearing pretty clothes and saying fine things . Maybelline could go to collegeshe liked school." All that the dream has promised is undercut, it seems. Lorraine dreams of acceptance and a place where she doesn't "feel any different from anybody else in the world." What prolongs both the text and the lives of Brewster's inhabitants is dream; in the same way that Mattie's dream of destruction postpones the end of the novel, the narrator's last words identify dream as that which affirms and perpetuates the life of the street. In Bonetti's, An Interview with Gloria Naylor, Naylor said "one character, one female protagonist, could not even attempt to represent the riches and diversity of the black female experience." Like Martin Luther King, Naylor resists a history that seeks to impose closure on black American dreams, recording also in her deferred ending a reluctance to see "community" as a static or finished work. He associates with the wrong people. Pick a style below, and copy the text for your bibliography. Lorraine and Theresa love each other, and their homosexuality separates them from the other women. 23, No. The violation of her personhood that is initiated with the rapist's objectifying look becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy borne out by the literal destruction of her body; rape reduces its victim to the status of an animal and then flaunts as authorization the very body that it has mutilated. Gloria Naylor died in 2016, at the age of 66. Writer Plot Summary For one evening, Cora Lee envisions a new life for herself and her children. It's everything you've read and everything you hope to read. "The Men of Brewster Place" include Mattie Michael's son, Basil, who jumped bail and left his mother to forfeit the house she had put up as bond. The men Naylor depicts in her novel are mean, cowardly, and lawless. Kiswana (Melanie) Browne denounces her parents' middle-class lifestyle, adopts an African name, drops out of college, and moves to Brewster Place to be close to those to whom she refers as "my people." As a young, single mother, Mattie places all of her dreams on her son. Characters It is morning and the sun is still shining; the wall is still standing, and everyone is getting ready for the block party. 49-64. It's important that when (people) turn to what they consider the portals of knowledge, they be taught all of American literature. For example, when Mattie leaves her home after her father beats her, she never again sees her parents. knelt between them and pushed up her dress and tore at the top of her pantyhose. Critics have praised Naylor's style since The Women of Brewster Place was published in 1982. Her story starts with a description of her happy childhood. That year also marked the August March on Washington as well as the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Retrieved February 22, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/women-brewster-place. Author Biography Explain. Etta Mae arrives at Brewster Place in what vehicle? Only when Kiswana says that "babies grow up" does Cora Lee begin to question her life; she realizes that while she does like babies, she does not know what to do with children when they grow up. 3, edited by David Peck and Eric Howard, Salem Press, 1997, pp. He believes that Butch is worthless and warns Mattie to stay away from him. Brewster Place names the women, houses Ciel's parents take her away, but Mattie stays on with Basil. Rae Stoll, Magill's Literary Annual, Vol. Why are there now more books written by black females about black females than there were twenty years ago? Much to his Mattie's dismay, he ends up in trouble and in jail. This technique works for Naylor because she has used the setting to provide the unity underlying the story. Mattie allows herself to be seduced by Butch Fuller, whom Samuel thinks is worthless. Naylor brings the reader to the edge of experience only to abandon him or her to the power of the imagination; in this case, however, the structured blanks that the novel asks the reader to fill in demand the imaginative construction of the victim's pain rather than the violator's pleasure.. Etta Mae As the reader's gaze is centered within the victim's body, the reader, is stripped of the safety of aesthetic distance and the freedom of artistic response. 24, No. ." The sixth boy took a dirty paper bag lying on the ground and stuffed it into her mouth. The Her chapter begins with the return of the boyfriend who had left her eleven months before when their baby, Serena, was only a month old. The Mediterranean families knew him as the man who would quietly do repairs with alcohol on his breath. GENERAL COMMENTARY Eugene, whose young Naylor's novel does not offer itself as a definitive treatment of black women or community, but it reflects a reality that a great many black women share; it is at the same time an indictment of oppressive social forces and a celebration of courage and persistence.