The Women of Brewster Place

Why, oh, why must I believe everything I read? It sets grotesquely romantic expectations of my reality, causing me to behave like a total idiot in most situations. Case in point: I made the mistake of barreling through this book during my lunch breaks and 15-minute breaks. When I wasn't slumping in my chair desperately attempting to stifle tears, I roamed the halls in a stupor, oblivious to what was going on around me. At one point, when a co-worker said, "Hey, Lindsay! What's up?" I caught myself about to mutter, "Uhhhh...rape" (which might have been kind of hilarious, if not without its repercussions).
I turned to this book purposefully after finishing East of Eden because, while it was wonderful as Steinbeck can't help but be, I had show more about had it with whiny men. I craved women. Strong women, three dimensional women. And I knew Gloria Naylor could deliver. My heart raced the entire time reading these stories, both for the passion and suspense. I went pages barely able to take a breath. I exhaled low moans with Lucielia and Lorraine. It made me wonder how I ever manage to move on--back to work, on to another book, overcoming a formidable challenge. Thank goodness I'm inclined to take fiction as gospel. show less

This book tells the story of the women that live in Brewster Place, a poor black neighborhood. Each chapter tells the story of one woman and they might appear in each other’s chapters. This book is about the strength of black women and the prejudices they face, but also about friendship and solidarity among each other. I must warn that there are a lot of trashy men in this book and I got angry quite a lot.

In the first story we follow Mattie Michael, which was known as a “good girl” until she gets pregnant from her one time with a guy named Butch, known to be a womanizer, and is forced to leave her parents’ house. The story tells about Mattie’s struggles and the prejudices she faces as a single mother. This is one of the show more sweetest and most recurring characters in the book.

The second story is about Etta that is trying to settle down and marry, but her reputation of sleeping with every man follows her; the story of Kiswana Browne is about an heartfelt conversation with her mother where the civil rights movement is addressed and this one is probably my favorite; Ciel has to deal with a husband that keeps leaving her and coming back into her life; Cora Lee has a lot of children and her story is about her struggles raising them while facing the prejudice of other people about her situation; the last story is about Theresa and Lorraine, a lesbian couple struggling with their homophobic neighbors while trying to deal differently with the situation, which causes conflict in their relationship.

At the end there is this dreamlike chapter where there is a display of anger by all of these women. The book starts and ends with a brief description of what Brewster Place is and what it represents, which makes it look a bit magical.

The book is very well constructed and I really liked it, but the chapter of “The Two” was especially hard to read for me because of the homophobic content and the rape scene that happens in it. It was the most graphic and violent chapter and I had some trouble getting through it. I feel like all of the other women had some sort of support, but these lesbian characters are left by themselves and I am not sure how to take that.

I am still curious to try other novels by this author. Linden Hills is a place that kept being mentioned and I know that there is a book with that name so I am curious to see if some of these characters pop up in there. I will just skip “The Men of Brewster Place” since I’ve heard that that is about the perspective of the men in this novel and honestly I don’t care for it because they were terrible and there are no excuses for what they did. show less

This is a great book, with the exception of the ending. It was anti-climactic, and it didn't provide any closure for the reader. I understand that the author was being symbolic, but the effect was flat and lifeless and false. It's a shame that the ending was so dull because the rest of the book had kept me hooked throughout. If the end had lived up to the promise of the rest of it then this review would have been a full five stars, no question. As it is, the bad ending can't diminish the excellent story/stories that came before.

I was disappointed to find this only as an abridged edition, but now that I've read it I found it so heartbreaking that I'm not sure I could have taken any more. Very real characters in staggeringly difficult situations. I feel undeservedly blessed to be able to step away from these lives and pick up something lighter. Thank you Gloria Naylor to opening my eyes to another world. I hope we can do better in future.

This book tells the story of various female inhabitants of a specific housing area, after it had turned into housing for African Americans. The chapters are chronological, so the reader is taken along in time, and you see how the street evolves over time.

This was good, and I enjoyed reading it, but to some extent I do think it showed its age - especially in the last chapter, which made me a bit uncomfortable thematically and very uncomfortable in the somewhat graphic description of sexual violence.

In the 1980s which I still sometimes think was only 20 years ago, I watched the made for tv movie, Women Of Brewster Place. At the time, I paid no attention to the credits, had never heard of Gloria Naylor and had no idea the movie was made from a book. The movie was stuck in my mind all these years and a couple of years ago I decided to go ahead and buy it to re-watch. I finally saw the credits and as the movie was still playing I immediately searched out and ordered a copy of the book. This weekend I finally sat down to read it and it has now sent me on a shopping spree to pick up more of Gloria Naylor's work.
This book is the bittersweet tale of seven Black women who all eventually end up in the run down tenement building of Brewster show more Place, a building on a dead end street where joy and hopelessness share equal time. Crime is rampant in the alley and by the wall that cuts them off from the more upscale neighborhood. Set in the days when being a lesbian could cost you your job, having a baby could keep you from getting housing. It is beautifully written and sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful, but never boring. It claims to be short stories, but to me it's more like chapters on each individual woman, and Ben the janitor/caretaker is an important character as well. It's hard for me to talk about the book without talking about the movie. The book is more graphic in certain scenes that would have been too intense for tv in those days, and yet the movie stuck so close to the book as to even include most of the dialogue word for word. It's only near the ending of the book that the movie went a slightly different way. I guess I have to recommend both to you, I loved them equally. show less

Very, very good overall. The stylistic transitions between the last three chapters were jarring, though, and, frankly, left me confused. After getting through the agonizing brutality of The Two, I didn't know what to make of the almost fanciful, magical realism of Block Party, and the stage play-like conclusion in Dusk didn't help. Naylor's writing and insights are fabulous, though, and I'm glad that her death alerted me to this book.