The power of the gaze to master and control is forced to its inevitable culmination as the body that was the object of erotic pleasure becomes the object of violence. By framing her own representation of rape with an "objective" description that promotes the violator's story of rape, Naylor exposes not only the connection between violation and objectification but the ease with which the reader may be persuaded to accept both. Style Critics have praised Naylor's style since The Women of Brewster Place was published in 1982. Research the psychological effects of abortion, and relate the evidence from the story to the information you have discovered. Then her son, for whom she gave up her life, leaves without saying goodbye. Brewster Place provides the connection among the seven very unique women with stories of their own to tell. He complains that he will never be able to get ahead with her and two babies to care for, and although she does not want to do it, she gets an abortion. She dies, and Theresa regrets her final words to her. In the epilogue we are told that Brewster Place is abandoned, but does not die, because the dreams of the women keep it alive: But the colored daughters of Brewster, spread over the canvas of time, still wake up with their dreams misted on the edge of a yawn. ", The situation of black men, she says, is one that "still needs work. For Further Study The women who have settled on Brewster Place exist as products of their Southern rural upbringing. "Marcia Gillespie took me out for my first literary lunch," Naylor recalls. And I knew better. Despite the inclination toward overwriting here, Naylor captures the cathartic and purgative aspects of resistance and aggression. The displacement of reality into dream defers closure, even though the chapter appears shaped to make an end. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. "It took me a little time, but after I got over the writer's block, I never looked back.". Web"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. All of the women, like the street, fully experience life with its high and low points. They say roughly one-third of black men have been jailed or had brushes with the law, but two-thirds are trying to hold their homes together, trying to keep their jobs, trying to keep their sanity, under the conditions in which they have to live. The oldest of three girls, Naylor was born in New York City on January 25, 1950. In her delirium and pain she sees movement at the end of the alley, and she picks up a brick to protect herself The author captures the faces, voices, feelings, words, and stories of an African-American family in the neighborhood and town where she grew up. Naylor sets the story within Brewster Place so that she can focus on telling each woman's story in relationship to her ties to the community. One of her first short stories was published in Essence magazine, and soon after she negotiated a book contract. In Naylor's representation, Lorraine's pain and not the rapist's body becomes the agent of violation, the force of her own destruction: "The screams tried to break through her corneas out into the air, but the tough rubbery flesh sent them vibrating back into her brain, first shaking lifeless the cells that nurtured her memory." Eugene, whose young Then suddenly Mattie awakes. FURTHER READING One night after an argument with Teresa, Lorraine decides to go visit Ben. Members of poor, sharecropping families, Alberta and Roosevelt felt that New The women all share the experience of living on the dead end street that the rest of the world has forgotten. Now the two are Lorraine and Mattie. Influenced by Roots When she discovers that sex produces babies, she starts to have sex in order to get pregnant. After she aborts the child she knows Eugene does not want, she feels remorse and begins to understand the kind of person Eugene really is. It will also examine the point at which dreams become "vain fantasy.". The son of Macrina the Elder, Basil is said to have moved with his family to the shores of the Black Sea during the persecution of Christians under Galerius. Yet, when she returns to her apartment, she climbs into bed with another man. After dropping out of college, Kiswana moves to Brewster Place to be a part of a predominantly African-American community. Despair and destruction are the alternatives to decay. Naylor earned a Master of Arts degree in Afro-American Studies from Yale University in 1983. PRINCIPAL WORKS In other words, she takes the characters back in time to show their backgrounds. "When I was a kid I used to read a book a day," Naylor says. "The Men of Brewster Place" (Hyperion) presents their struggle to live and understand what it means to be men against the backdrop of Brewster Place, a tenement on a dead-end street in an unnamed northern city "where it always feels like dusk.". a dream today that one day every valley shall be exalted and every mountain and hill will be made low , and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed " Hughes's poem and King's sermon can thus be seen as two poles between which Naylor steers. A man who is going to buy a sandwich turns away; it is more important that he stay and eat the sandwich than that he pay for it. Each foray away from the novel gives me something fresh and new to bring back to it when I'm ready. Their ability to transform their lives and to stand strong against the difficulties that face them in their new environment and circumstances rings true with the spirit of black women in American today. She is left dreaming only of death, a suicidal nightmare from which only Mattie's nurturing love can awaken her. For many of the women who have lived there, Brewster Place is an anchor as well as a confinement and a burden; it is the social network that, like a web, both sustains and entraps. TITLE COMMENTARY Unfortunately, he causes Mattie nothing but heartache. As the dream ends, we are left to wonder what sort of register the "actual" block party would occupy. INTRODUCTION He seldom works. The Women of Brewster Place depicts seven courageous black women struggling to survive life's harsh realities. Webclimax Lorraines brutal gang rape in Brewster Places alley by C. C. Baker and his friends is the climax of the novel. He believes that Butch is worthless and warns Mattie to stay away from him. All of the Brewster Place women respect Mattie's strength, truthfulness, and morals as well as her ability to survive the abuse, loss, and betrayal she has suffered. When she dreams of the women joining together to tear down the wall that has separated them from the rest of the city, she is dreaming of a way for all of them to achieve Lorraine's dream of acceptance. A voracious reader since "the age of literacy," Naylor credits her mother as her greatest literary influence. Historical Context The four sections cover such subjects as slavery, changing times, family, faith, "them and us," and the future. The Critical Response to Gloria Naylor (Critical Responses in Arts and Letters, No. 37-70. Novels for Students. It provides a realistic vision of black urban women's lives and inspires readers with the courage and spirit of black women in America.". When Mattie moves to Brewster Place, Ciel has grown up and has a child of her own. She vows that she will start helping them with homework and walking them to school. Situated within the margins of the violator's story of rape, the reader is able to read beneath the bodily configurations that make up its text, to experience the world-destroying violence required to appropriate the victim's body as a sign of the violator's power. , Not only does Langston Hughes's poem speak generally about the nature of deferral and dreams unsatisfied, but in the historical context that Naylor evokes it also calls attention implicitly to the sixties' dream of racial equality and the "I have a dream" speech of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Naylor succeeds in communicating the victim's experience of rape exactly because her representation documents not only the violation of Lorraine's body from without but the resulting assault on her consciousness from within. We discover after a first reading, however, that the narrative of the party is in fact Mattie's dream vision, from which she awakens perspiring in her bed. Lorraine reminds Ben of his estranged daughter, and Lorraine finds in Ben a new father to replace the one who kicked her out when she refused to lie about being a lesbian. She thought about quitting, but completed her degree when the school declared that her second novel, "Linden Hills," would fulfill the thesis requirement. When they had finished and stopped holding her up, her body fell over like an unstringed puppet. But I worried about whether or not the problems that were being caused by the men in the women's lives would be interpreted as some bitter statement I had to make about black men. Both literally and figuratively, Brewster Place is a dead end streetthat is, the street itself leads nowhere and the women who live there are trapped by their histories, hopes, and dreams. They did find, though, that their children could attend schools and had access to libraries, opportunities the Naylors had not enjoyed as black children. Eyeing the attractive visiting preacher, she wonders if it is not still possible for her to change her lot in life. Though Etta's journey starts in the same small town as Mattie's, the path she takes to Brewster Michael Awkward, "Authorial Dreams of Wholeness: (Dis)Unity, (Literary) Parentage, and The Women of Brewster Place," in Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. falling action The falling action is found in Matties dream of the upcoming block party following Lorraines rape and Bens death. For example, in a review published in Freedomways, Loyle Hairston says that the characters " throb with vitality amid the shattering of their hopes and dreams." Two years later, she read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; it was the first time she had read a novel written by a black woman. He loses control and beats Mattie in an attempt to get her to name the baby's father. Victims of ignorance, violence, and prejudice, all of the women in the novel are alienated from their families, other people, and God. Just as she is about to give up, she meets Eva Turner, an old woman who lives with her granddaughter, Ciel. She resents her conservative parents and their middle-class values and feels that her family has rejected their black heritage. While Naylor's characters are fictional, they immortalize the spirit of her own grandmother, great aunt, and mother. In a catalog of similes, Hughes evokes the fate of dreams unfulfilled: They dry up like raisins in the sun, fester like sores, stink like rotten meat, crust over like syrupy sweets: They become burdensome, or possibly explosive. But perhaps the mode of the party about to take place will be neither demonic nor apocalyptic. Feeling rejected both by her neighbors and by Teresa, Lorraine finds comfort in talking to Ben, the old alcoholic handyman of Brewster Place. Baker and his friends, the teenage boys who terrorize Brewster Place. They are still "gonna have a party," and the rain in Mattie's dream foreshadows the "the stormy clouds that had formed on the horizon and were silently moving toward Brewster Place." Cora is skeptical, but to pacify Kiswana she agrees to go. Many commentators have noted the same deft touch with the novel's supporting characters; in fact, Hairston also notes, "Other characters are equally well-drawn. The final act of violence, the gang rape of Lorraine, underscores men's violent tendencies, emphasizing the differences between the sexes. More importantly, the narrator emphasizes that the dreams of Brewster's inhabitants are what keep them alive. Naylor has died at age She believes she must have a man to be happy. Eugene, whose young daughter stuck a fork in an electrical socket and died while he was fighting with his wife Ciel, turns out to be a closeted homosexual. In this case, Brewster Place undergoes life processes. He is said to have been a She stops even trying to keep any one man around; she prefers the "shadows" who come in the night. As she climbs the stairs to the apartment, however, she hears Mattie playing Etta's "loose life" records. As this chapter opens, people are gathering for Serena's funeral. Give evidence from the story that supports this notion. The brick wall symbolizes the differences between the residents of Brewster Place and their rich neighbors on the other side of the wall. Her family moved several times during her childhood, living at different times in a housing project in upper Bronx, a Harlem apartment building, and in Queens. The end of the novel raises questions about the relation of dreams to the persistence of life, since the capacity of Brewster's women to dream on is identified as their capacity to live on. The production, sponsored by a grant from the city, does indeed inspire Cora to dream for her older children. Since the book was first published in 1982, critics have praised Gloria Naylor's characters. It is at the performance of Shakespeare's play where the dreams of the two women temporarily merge. For Naylor, discovering the work of Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, Richard Wright, James Baldwin (whom she calls one of her favorite writers) and other black authors was a turning point. Her women feel deeply, and she unflinchingly transcribes their emotions Naylor's potency wells up from her language. In Naylor's representation of rape, the power of the gaze is turned against itself; the aesthetic observer is forced to watch powerlessly as the violator steps up to the wall to stare with detached pleasure at an exhibit in which the reader, as well as the victim of violence, is on display. Yet, he remains more critical of her ability to make historical connectionsto explore the depths of the human experience. "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 enemy wasn't Black men," Joyce Ladner contends, " 'but oppressive forces in the larger society' " [When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America, 1984], and Naylor's presentation of men implies agreement. 4, December, 1990, pp. She sets the beginning of The Women of Brewster Place at the end of World War I and brings it forward thirty years. There are many readers who feel cheated and betrayed to discover that the apocalyptic destruction of Brewster's wall never takes place. Brewster Place lives on because the women whose dreams it has been a part of live on and continue to dream. ", Her new dream of maternal devotion continues as they arrive home and prepare for bed. At that point, Naylor returns Maggie to her teen years in Rock Vale, Tennessee, where Butch Fuller seduced her after sharing sugar cane with her. Kiswana grew up in Linden Hills, a "rich" neighborhood not far from Brewster Place. Mostly marginal and spectral in Brewster Place, the men reflect the nightmarish world they inhabit by appearing as if they were characters in a dream., "The Block Party" is a crucial chapter of the book because it explores the attempts to experience a version of community and neighborhood. Mattie's dream presents an empowering response to this nightmare of disempowerment. The street continues to exist marginally, on the edge of death; it is the "end of the line" for most of its inhabitants. Ciel keeps taking Eugene back, even though he is verbally abusive and threatens her with physical abuse. She renews ties here with both Etta Mae and Ciel. I came there with one novel under my belt and a second one under way, and there was something wrong about it. Lorraine lay in that alley only screaming at the moving pain inside of her that refused to come to rest. It is on Brewster Place that the women encounter everyday problems, joys, and sorrows. The changing ethnicity of the neighborhood reflects the changing demographics of society. Baker is the leader of a gang of hoodlums that haunt the alley along the wall of Brewster Place, where they trap and rape Lorraine. She will not change her actions and become a devoted mother, and her dreams for her children will be deferred. brought his fist down into her stomach. When she remembers with guilt that her children no longer like school and are often truant, she resolves to change her behavior in order to ensure them brighter futures: "Junior high; high school; collegenone of them stayed little forever. I had been the person behind `The Women of Brewster Place. Soon after Naylor introduces each of the women in their current situations at Brewster Place, she provides more information on them through the literary technique known as "flashback." Then she opened her eyes and they screamed and screamed into the face above hersthe face that was pushing this tearing pain inside of her body. Naylor captures the strength of ties among women. Brewster is a place for women who have no realistic expectations of revising their marginality, most of whom have "come down" in the world. For a while she manages to earn just enough money to pay rent on the room she shares with her baby, Basil. Unfortunately, the realization comes too late for Ciel. There is an attempt on Naylor's part to invoke the wide context of Brewster's particular moment in time and to blend this with her focus on the individual dreams and psychologies of the women in the stories. knelt between them and pushed up her dress and tore at the top of her pantyhose. It also stands for the oppression the women have endured in the forms of prejudice, violence, racism, shame, and sexism. asks Ciel. As a result, What happened to Ciel in Brewster Place? The wall of Brewster Place is a powerful symbol of the ways racial oppression, sexual exploitation, and class domination constrains the life expectations and choices of the women who live there. She goes into a deep depression after her daughter's death, but Mattie succeeds in helping her recover. The novel recognizes the precise political and social consequences of the cracked dream in the community it deals with, but asserts the vitality and life that persist even when faith in a particular dream has been disrupted. Tearing at the very bricks of Brewster's walls is an act of resistance against the conditions that prevail within it. Brewster Place, carries it within her, and shares its tragedies., Everyone in the community knows that this block party is significant and important because it is a way of moving forward after the terrible tragedy of Lorraine and Ben. Then Cora Lee notices that there is still blood on the bricks. Samuel Michael, a God-fearing man, is Mattie's father. The men Naylor depicts in her novel are mean, cowardly, and lawless. As its name suggests, "The Block Party" is a vision of community effort, everyone's story. She couldn't feel the skin that was rubbing off of her arms. She couldn't tell when they changed places. She didn't feel her split rectum or the patches in her skull where her hair had been torn off." Lorraine and Theresa love each other, and their homosexuality separates them from the other women. "The Women of Brewster Place Black American Literature Forum, Vol. Although they come to it by very different routes, Brewster is a reality that they are "obliged to share" [as Smith States in "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism," Conditions, 1977.] Further, Naylor suggests that the shape and content of the dream should be capable of flexibility and may change in response to changing needs and times. The interactions of the characters and the similar struggles they live through connect the stories, as do the recurring themes and motifs. "I was able to conquer those things through my craft. She also encourages Mattie to save her money. 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. Ben is killed with a brick from the dead-end wall of Brewster Place. Explain. But perhaps the most revealing stories about She will encourage her children, and they can grow up to be important, talented people, like the actors on the stage. It's everybody you know and everybody you hope to know..". Filming & Production Each woman in the book has her own dream. "Most of my teachers didn't know about black writers, because I think if they had, they probably would have turned me on to them. In that violence, the erotic object is not only transformed into the object of violence but is made to testify to the suitability of the object status projected upon it. 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. He implies that the story has a hopeless ending. By manipulating the reader's placement within the scene of violence, Naylor subverts the objectifying power of the gaze; as the gaze is trapped within the erotic object, the necessary distance between the voyeur and the object of voyeuristic pleasure is collapsed. The series was a spinoff of the 1989 miniseries The Women of Brewster Place, which was based upon After a frightening episode with a rat in her apartment, Mattie looks for new housing. The sermon's movement is from disappointment, through a recognition of deferral and persistence, to a reiteration of vision and hope: Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes, but in spite of that I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know, you can't give up in life. Based on the novel by Gloria Naylor, which deals with several strong-willed women who live As the object of the reader's gaze is suddenly shifted, that reader is thrust into an understanding of the way in which his or her own look may perpetuate the violence of rape. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying, Cape and Smith, 1930. Like them, her books sing of sorrows proudly borne by black women in America. She felt a weight drop on her spread body. She says that she finally was spurred to tell their stories by the death of her father in 1993 and the Million Man March two years later.
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