The Women Of Brewster Place- Gloria
Naylor.
Plot Overview-
The Women of Brewster Place is a novel told in seven stories. Of the
seven stories, six are centered on individual characters, while the final story
is about the entire community. The primary characters and the title characters
of each chapter are all women and residents of Brewster Place.
Brewster
Place is a housing development in an unnamed city. It seems destined to be an
unfortunate place since the people linked to its creation are all corrupt.
Despite the secretive circumstances surrounding its development, Brewster Place
survives for decades, offering a home to one new wave of migrants after
another. The life history of Brewster Place comes to resemble the history of
the country as the community changes with each new historical shift. Following
the Civil Rights Era, Brewster Place inherits its last inhabitants,
African-Americans, many of whom are migrants from the southern half of the
United States. The stories within the novel are the stories of these residents.
The first and longest narrative within the novel is Mattie Michael’s along with several
other characters, arrives in Brewster Place from her parents’ home in the
South. Mattie leaves her parents’ home because she is pregnant by a
disreputable man named Butch Fuller. Mattie decides to move to the North at
approximately the same time in history as the Great Migration. Living away from
home with a new baby, Mattie takes a job working in an assembly line. She works
long hours and is forced to live in a dilapidated building. After a rat bites
her child, Mattie decides to find a new home. While walking with her baby, she
runs into Ms. Eva Turner, an old, kind, light-skinned African-American woman
who takes her into her home and refuses to charge her rent. After Ms. Eva dies,
Mattie purchases the house and remains there to raise her son, Basil.
Basil
grows up to be a troubled young man who is unable to claim responsibility for
his actions. One night, he kills a man in a bar fight and is arrested. Mattie
uses her house for collateral, which Basil forfeits once he disappears. Mattie,
after thirty years, is forced to give up her home and move to Brewster Place.
Mattie’s
childhood friend, Etta Johnson, joins Mattie at Brewster Place. After a long
life of running from one man to the next, she has arrived at Mattie’s, hoping
to find some stability. Mattie takes her to church, where Etta meets Reverend
Woods. She is taken by his looks, wealth, and status, but after sleeping with
him, she realizes it was all just a fantasy and that he wanted only sex. Etta
leaves feeling broken, but her spirit is restored once she finds out that
Mattie has stayed up all night waiting for her.
Kiswana
Browne is different from all of Brewster Place’s other residents in that she
has chosen to live there voluntarily. Raised in the affluent community, Linden
Hills, Kiswana dropped out of college to live in Brewster Place, where she
believes she can effect real social change in the black community. Kiswana is
nervously waiting her mother’s first visit to her rundown studio apartment.
Once her mother arrives, the two women have several short arguments that
culminate in Kiswana calling her mother a “white-man’s nigger.” Kiswana’s
mother responds by explaining the origin of Kiswana’s real name, Melanie, and
the pride she has in her heritage. Before leaving, she secretly gives Kiswana
enough money to have a phone line installed.
Lucielia
Louis Turner, also known as Ciel, is the granddaughter of Ms. Eva. Lucielia
grew up with Mattie and her son, Basil. Now grown, Lucielia has a daughter,
Serena, with a man named Eugene. Eugene, in addition to constantly leaving
Lucielia, also treats her and their daughter terribly. After complaining about
his lack of opportunities, Eugene indirectly gets Lucielia to abort what would
have been their second child. Shortly afterward, however, he comes home to say
that he’s found a new job in Maine and must leave right away. His lying is
obvious; he’s simply determined to leave. While Lucielia and Eugene are
fighting, Serena chases a roach into an electric socket with a fork. She is
electrocuted and dies, leaving Lucielia nearly lifeless with grief. Following
the funeral, Mattie is the one who begins to release Lucielia’s enormous grief
by rocking and bathing her until she falls asleep crying.
As a child, Cora Lee was
obsessed with babies, and this obsession continues when she is an adult.
Beginning in her sophomore year of high school, she has one child after
another, almost all with different men. She lives in a filthy apartment, and
her children are terribly neglected, since she can only care for them while
they’re infants. One day, Kiswana finds one of Cora Lee’s children eating out
of a garbage can. She tries to help Cora Lee by inviting her to a production of
a Shakespeare play being staged in the park. Cora Lee is so moved by Kiswana’s
brief appearance that she takes interest in her children. She cleans them and
the house in preparation for the play. At the play, the children and Cora Lee
are all touched by the performance. By the end, Cora Lee begins to imagine a
better future for her children. She kisses them all goodnight. However, when
she goes to her own bed, there’s a nameless man waiting for her. She drops her
clothes and goes to bed with him.
Lorraine and Theresa
are the only lesbian residents of Brewster Place. The residents fear Lorraine
and Theresa, even though they are a loving and considerate couple. One resident
in particular, Sophie, watches their every move and spreads rumors about their
behavior. Lorraine is hurt by the judgmental responses of her neighbors.
Theresa, however, claims not to care what people think or say. Lorraine tries
to incorporate herself into the community by attending Kiswana’s tenants’
association meeting, but there, Sophie attacks her for her sexuality. She
leaves in tears, and Ben, the
oldest resident and the janitor of the complex, consoles her by taking her to
his apartment and telling her the story of his daughter and wife. Ben’s
daughter was indirectly led into prostitution by her parents, who refused to do
anything about the fact that she was being forced to sleep with their white
landlord.
Lorraine
gains confidence from her burgeoning relationship with Ben. After a fight with
Theresa, Lorraine goes to a party on her own. Afterward, instead of coming
straight home, she goes down a dark alley. She is confronted by a group of
young men who had earlier insulted her because of her sexuality. They gang rape
her and leave her for dead. Lorraine manages to get up just as the sun is rising.
She stumbles down the alley and sees Ben. She grabs a brick and crushes his
skull with it.
Following
Ben’s death, Mattie has a dream that the rain that has drenched Brewster Place
since Ben’s murder has suddenly stopped in time for the block party planned by
the tenants’ association. The rain eventually returns during the party, and
everyone except the women run for shelter. The women believe that the wall in
front of which Ben died still has blood on it, so they begin to frantically
tear it apart, brick by brick. Mattie wakes to a beautiful sunny day. In the
end, all of the residents of Brewster Place are forced out, and the block is
condemned. Brewster Place, abandoned, lives on only in the hopes and memories
of the women who once lived there.
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