Customer Reviews

THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I remember female classmates telling me that, as a white male, I could never understand this book. In one sense, they were right. I don't read a lot of books by black females. But, in another sense, they were dead wrong.

Gloria Naylor gives lie to the notion that authors and readers must be bound by their self-stereotypes and that persons of diverse racial or economic backgrounds cannot understand each other. This book is beautiful.

Yes, the majority of characters are black women from the ghetto. But, like true literature, this book isn't really about so select a group. The experiences and feelings of these women are transcendent - transcendent because they are "real" persons first and black women second.

For example, Naylor describes the grief a young mother suffers for an infant who has died after sticking its finger into an electric socket. The grief Naylor captures is universal. If mystics have experiences in which they have such joy it makes them feel one with the universe, then Naylor does the same thing here, only with pain.

And isn't this what literature is supposed to do: make us understand ourselves better by showing life as someone else, someone who may be 100% different than us? And by gaining a glimpse that perhaps we are not as different from others as we assumed, don't we join the world a little more?

Gloria Naylor's book reads fast, just like life is lived on the little dead end street known as Brewster Place. Really a series of inter-connected short stories, it can easily be read a chapter at a time, cuz each character gets her own chapter. While not all the characters are thoroughly likeable, they all have plenty of redeeming qualities. Focusing not only on the women's trials and tribulations, Naylor also delves into the history and background that came before, contributing to each woman's present situation. These women, mostly abandoned or cast off by the men in their lives, struggle to make a sense of community from a handful of hopes and dreams.

Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place is a relatively fast read about the lives of the women who live in a dilapadated housing complex on a dead end street. Naylor's symbolism and writing style makes this not only accessible reading, but enjoyable.

The characters range from unlikable to almost saintly in their descriptions. Although presented as several short stories, they do complete a coherent novel with the same characters throughout. What I enjoyed was that Naylor did not simply focus upon the hardships involved with living in Brewster, but the motivations behind the "cases". I think she did a great job providing us with women from different backgrounds, all ending up in the same place, with different hopes and dreams for themselves.

Men do play a substantial part in the happiness or lack thereof for the characters. Although other reviewers disliked this about the book, I think it is sadly realistic. Part of the culture of the day that this book is set in is that women didn't have the same opportunities, especially without a husband. I think it affects the mindset of the community and in general, the women resent men, but realize they need them, and are angered by that.

I enjoyed this book...and I would recommend it. I found that the descriptions and backgrounds of the women at Brewster Place were very interesting, and gave me some insight to a culture that we prefer to forget about - that is - the women left without husbands (or with "bad" ones...) in a time when women were supposed to rely on these men who abandoned them. It's about finding something within to fill the gaps that society doesn't provide for. The women try to make a community out of a group of unfulfilled dreamers, of a group of people that don't really understand eachother, and become self-reliant women. And of course, get out of Brewster Place.

I have loved this book for a very, very long time. I think it shows the same beauty as Toni Morrison's writing but is considerably more accessible to those who don't consider themselves academics or intellectuals. I don't know WHY gloria naylor doesn't get the attention she deserves. While there have been some implications that this is a "man bashing" book, I don't see that at all. I see an honest look at SOME women's lives and SOME women's relationships with men, SOME of whom happening to be quite triffling. This story is not of a universal experience but it does delve into the universal emotions of longing, loneliness, dissapointment and, finally, joy and self-acceptance.

I'm one of those people who love to follow the book awards. Like the Nobel Peace Prize in literature, the Pulitzer, the Man Booker Prize, and the National Book Award. The books that win these awards are always so amazing that I'm never disappointed. And as a the winner of the National Book Award in 1982, 'The Women of Brewster Place' completely blew me away! The writing is beautifully fluid and glorious. I just couldn't get enough. I read this book in less than 2 days that's how strong it got to me. And even though the book is thin, only clocking in at 192 pages, it is packed full of heart-breaking emotions that run the gamut from disappointment and despair to love and joy and hope!

As a young woman I can remember as clear as day the remarkable t.v. movie that was created from this book. And I have to say as someone who normally believes that the book is always better than the movie, this book is so amazing that nothing is left on the page that doesn't make it to the screen. Even if you've never seen the movie, the writing in this book is so clear and detailed that you can imagine everything that happens as if you're actually watching a movie. It's crazy. I don't think I've ever read a book that is so accessible and believable. Where the characters are people you know or could know. And where places like Brewster Place actually exist.

I loved reading this book. I would recommend it to everyone. Buy it immediately.

This book is vibrant with emotion! Naylor has a way of making you physically experience the feelings of her characters in vivid ways. The memories of each woman in the book creates facets of one truly compelling story that must be read!

I really liked this book. I had to read it in a college lit course - "Women in Contemporary American Literature" - and expected to hate it. To my surprise, the book's unique format, multiple narrators, and interesting situations hooked me and held my attention. The book is about realistic people with real problems and real lives. I loved it.

I saw this movie first, but I still wanted to read the book because supposedly the book is always better. In this case, the book was just like the movie but it was still good nevertheless. This book takes you on a journey of seven different women, each with her own set of problems. The one things that brings each of these women together is Brewster Place, something one would call "the projects". Brewster place helps all of these women come together in the end by taking control of Brewster Place and the violence that went along with it. VERY GOOD BOOK!!!

Seven African-American women living in a small corner of an unnamed Northern city, in decrepit, badly heated buildings that have been abandoned by successive waves of workers and immigrants. They have arrived there in different ways, their motives for settling there range from idealism through escape to inertia. Some women have come up from the South to the "Promised Land" of the North, only to find disillusionment and loss. Others have moved in from better parts of the city to escape prejudice against lesbians or in protest against the relentless onslaught of middle class values (oh, horror !) among the upwardly mobile black bourgeoisie. Gloria Naylor tells each woman's story separately, but slowly links develop between and among the various characters. In general, they are stories of the will to survive--- the overcoming, not so much of white prejudice, but of predatory or misanthropic behavior from their own relatives and neighbors. Economic hardship traces its lines on the lives of the women as well. Each one handles lack of money in a different way. To paraphrase an old song, "disappointment was their closest friend". Violence smoulders under the surface, appearing menacingly like shark's fins above the lagoon's surface, only to explode at the book's denouement at the same time that a coming-together occurs. Hope and despair forever wrapped around each other.

Naylor's writing is a little patchy, sometimes dropping towards the banal, but occasionally rising to absolute brilliance. The stories do not lag, lead you into the next one, and leave you wishing there were more. The one surprising common thread is the utter hopelessness and inadequacy of all the men. Perhaps this attitude springs from the author's personal experience, but it borders on stereotype. While the female characters are varied, their motives complex, and the way they meet the challenges of life intriguing, the men (except for one despairing alcoholic) are presented as universally weak scoundrels and losers. Since the book is about women, I read it without many misgivings, but it does leave you wondering. THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE deserves a solid spot in the annals of American literature for its language and for its portrayal of African-American womens' lives for a worldwide audience. Brewster Place is a metaphor for America, something like Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". Though things have changed, even so, too many daughters of Brewster Place still "wake up with their dreams misted on the edge of a yawn."

In this beautifully written, horrifically detailed book, one enters into the life of women who make do with what the hand they've been dealt. It makes you laugh, cry and feel for these characters. Naylor writes in a way that draws you into the character, wanting to reach out and give them a hand. I took a short stories class and read of Luciela Louise Turner's life and was hooked and ordered it online. I will never think of these women, or even the real life women who suffer these poverties everyday.