The Women of Brewster Place

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1982

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Interlude 1-Chapter 1

Chapters 2-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapter 7-Interlude 2

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Background

Authorial Context: Gloria Naylor’s Contribution to African American Literature

Gloria Naylor was an American novelist born in New York City in 1950. Naylor’s parents were sharecroppers in Mississippi who moved north to seek better opportunities. Although Naylor was an excellent student who loved to read and write, she decided to forgo a college education after high school. Instead, she spent several years as a Jehovah’s Witness missionary in Florida, North Carolina, and New York. In 1975, Naylor returned to New York and enrolled in Medgar Evers College, where she briefly studied nursing before switching to English. In college, Naylor began reading the work of writers Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, whose styles would greatly influence her own writing. Naylor graduated with her bachelor’s degree in 1981 and completed an MA in African American Studies at Yale University.

Published in 1983, The Women of Brewster Place was Naylor’s highly celebrated debut novel. The text introduced many of the elements that Naylor’s writing would become known for, including her lyrical prose, her varied use of narrative techniques, and her nuanced portrayals of African American women. As her writing career gained momentum, Naylor went on to publish several more novels, including Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe (1992). Like The Women of Brewster Place, these texts also explore issues of classism, racism, and sexism in conjunction with the female African American experience. In addition to her own writing, Naylor taught courses in literature and writing at several prestigious universities. In 2016, Naylor died of a heart attack in her home in the US Virgin Islands.

Critical Context: Intersectionality

Intersectionality is an analytical framework that was first coined by scholar and Civil Rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989. The term refers to the ways in which various aspects of an individual’s identity (such as race, gender, class, and sexuality) converge to create unique experiences of discrimination or disadvantage. Originally, Crenshaw used the term in a legal context within a paper that illustrated how cases whose rulings are based on race or gender bias often fail to account for the experiences of Black women. Black women do experience sexism, but not in the same way that white women do, and they also experience racism, but not in the same way that Black men do. The multiple facets of their identity come together to create a unique experience that differs from individual social categories like race or gender.

Because The Women of Brewster Place is a novel about the Black female experience, the concept of intersectionality offers a key critical lens for effective interpretation of the complex issues it portrays. As the lives of the various protagonists interweave, the women in the novel experience specific manifestations of discrimination and disadvantage because of their combined race, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual orientation. Most prominently, they must contend with issues arising from blatant sexism—including violence and abuse—at the hands of the Black men in their lives. However, although the women generally band together to fight adversity, other facets of their identity can compel them to turn on one another. For example, some wealthy Black women, like Kiswana’s mother, are shown to discriminate against the poorer Black people living in Brewster Place. Perhaps the clearest example of the complex intersection between identity and disadvantage is the character of Lorraine, a Black woman who moves to Brewster Place with her partner, Theresa, and experiences ostracization from everyone in Brewster Place due to her romantic relationship. This dynamic illustrates the multiple tiers of discrimination that exist in society. As the woman with the most intense version of an intersectional identity in the novel, Lorraine experiences the cruelest fate when she experiences a violent assault at the novel’s conclusion.