Introduction


Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor embraces being a black female writer, but she also laments that the label often results in a kind of literary segregation. For Naylor, literature is at its best when it recognizes all people, yet she astutely recognizes that her own identity is often used to keep her work (and the work of other African-American writers) in a niche separate from mainstream American (and predominantly white) fiction. Her novel The Women of Brewster Place uses pastiche as a means toward exploring the lives of a group of African-American women. The novel is a series of rich, interconnected stories. And while they are by no means intended to represent all African-American women, Naylor’s stories add their voices to the American canon.

Essential Facts

  1. Education has played an important role in Gloria Naylor’s life. In addition to being a graduate of Yale, she has taught at New York University, Boston University, and Cornell.
  2. Faith and spirituality are also key influences in Naylor’s life and work. She joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was eighteen.
  3. Naylor’s breakout success, the novel The Women of Brewster Place, was completed while she was still studying at Yale.
  4. The Women of Brewster Place has had many lives. The novel was released in the early 1980s, and Oprah Winfrey turned it into a miniseries at the end of that decade. In 2007, the novel was adapted as stage musical.
  5. The popularity of The Women of Brewster Place spurred Naylor to write a follow-up, appropriately titled The Men of Brewster Place.