A review by elderlingfool
The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor

emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

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 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. 
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