The Women of Brewster Place (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Gloria Naylor
- First Published: 1982
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The second half of the twentieth century
- Setting: The South and an unnamed Northern city resembling Boston
- Principal Characters: Mattie Michael, Eva Turner, Etta Mae Johnson, Kiswana Browne, Lucielia Turner, Cora Lee, Lorraine, Ben, C. C. Baker
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Social realism
- Subjects: 1950’s, African Americans, 1960’s, Child rearing or parenting, Mothers, Parents and children, Sexism, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Race, Abused persons, 1940’s, Roads, streets, or highways, Friendship, 1930’s, Poverty or poor people, Rape, Inner cities or inner-city life, Lesbianism or lesbians, Women’s issues, Oppression, Women, Tragedy
- Locales: North (U.S.), Brewster Place (fictive)
The Novel
The Women of Brewster Place is an unusual novel because of its structure. It consists of a prefatory Langston Hughes poem, a prologue (“Dawn”) and epilogue (“Dusk”), six stories featuring a character through whose eyes readers see the action unfold, and a seventh story, “The Block Party,” that brings many of the characters together in the violent destruction of a wall. The destruction, which occurs only in Mattie’s dream, is followed by a short description of the day of the block party. Naylor has described the book as a collection of...
[The entire page is 2980 words long]
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