The Impermanence of Brewster Place

In Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, the idea of migration to Brewster Place serves to accentuate notions of the ostracism of African Americans following the Civil Rights strife of the 1960s. Through Etta's failed relationships, Mattie’s loss of her home, and Cora Lee’s obsession with children, Naylor suggests that women are constantly searching for a tangible link to something permanent and concrete. In the end, Brewster Place is condemned and the women are forced out. Thus any hope that readers had for a happy ending is banished and the cruel reality of the lives of African American women is exposed.

The final chapter “Dusk” uses the motif of the neighborhood to represent the reality of the lives of African American women. The characters in the novel lose their individuality as they come to represent symbols, rather than actual women. The narrator describes how the neighborhood, “watched its last generation of children torn away from it by court orders and eviction notices, and it had become too tired and sick to help them” (191). The women of Brewster Place and Brewster Place become synonymous and their fates are the same. Just as the neighborhood is destroyed, so are the hopes that the women will have anything tangible to cling to.

Without a doubt Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place leave readers with a decidedly negative view on the fate of African American women. Although, I do not think Naylor’s voice adequately highlights the reality of every black woman’s life, it is important to convey the darkest side in order to make a strong impression on readers.