The Women of Brewster Place: A Novel in Seven Stories (Penguin Contemporary American Fiction Series)

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.

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 purchased this book because it was required for a course I am taking. It was a fairly quick and easy read. Although each woman has their own chapter, all of their stories are connected and in learning more about one, you learn more about the others. If you are reading this for a class you cannot start somewhere other than the beginning hoping to find the answers. You will not be able to follow what is happening and you will miss important connections.

While each woman's situation isn't ideal and the conditions are bleak the story is full of hope and promise making the characters relatable and human. I found myself sad and upset in their times of misfortune and cheering them on in times of awareness and courage. It is probably not a book I would have chosen on my own but I didn't mind reading it. It was easy to follow and engaged me as a reader.

A riveting first novel that darks to write about the stuff of melodrama, and yet never slips into sentimentality. It accomplishes this because the stories are all too real. The tragedy of these women's lives we see even today in the news and on the streets around us. These are the kinds of stories that make up a revolution, except the revolution has passed. The revolution had a dream at its center: a world where all had the same chances. But that dream has been on hold--deferred, as the Langston Hughes poem that serves as an epigraph to this "novel" puts it. In fact, Naylor is responding to that idea--where is the dream now?
I had to put novel in quotes above because this really is a montage (echoes of the Hughes poem once again). In science fiction, they call these novels that are made by linking short stories together a "fix-up," but that really does not fit this well, possibly because Naylor planned it this way, rather than cobbling it together as an afterthought. Predating Amistaud Maupin's Tales of the City, a similar collection of tales about the occupants of one building, its depiction of the various women who find themselves in the last place that will take them, a slum tenement building on a dead end street, is gripping and emotionally moving. These women are not perfect-- Naylor's heroes all have tragic flaws--but the general feeling you get is not that they are necessarily their own downfall, but as much a victim of the society that they find themselves a part of. Even in the worst case, Cora Lee, there's something there to pity, and possibly, gain new understanding.

I loved this book years ago when I first read it & hardly ever have time to re-read books as I have so many others to devour, but so glad I did because it is even more moving, beautiful & magical than I even remembered. One of my all-time favorites and I am pretty picky about food writing. I’m also not terribly partial to short stories or vignettes (they can feel like the first chapter of a book that just ends abruptly) - but when the stories interweave as this one does, it is truly a thing of beauty. I remembered it being very good but upon re-reading it I gained a whole new respect - some books don’t measure up upon revisiting - this one was even better than I remembered. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Wish t was 10x longer!!

The Women of Brewster Place, by Gloria Naylor, published in 1982, is honestly one of the best books I've ever read. I enjoyed this book greatly and I would recommend it to anyone who has trouble reading. I find it hard to find books that hold my attention start to finish, and The Women of Brewster Place was really a fast read and Gloria Naylor definitely held my attention through out the whole book.
The book is a contemporary fiction, that tells you the story of seven black women's lives, how there lives are intertwined and how there experiences led them to Brewster Place, a rundown old brick building, on a dead end street. Each woman has her own chapter and it's like reading a different short story for each of there lives. Gloria tells each women's life as if you are there with the women, experiencing there heartaches and there happiness right by there side.
"They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Browser Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond there years. Like the ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story" a quote from the book where Gloria Naylor tells of the women who lived at Brewster.
The main characters in this book were the seven women. Mattie Michael the oldest, had a hard life raising a child on her own, and becomes a source of comfort and strength, for the other women of Brewster. There's Etta Mae Johnson, one of Mattie's good friends, even before Brewster, struggles with her free spirited lifestyle, and always choosing the wrong man. Another is Kiswana Browne, whose very proud of her black heritage, deals with her mother's constant opinion on her life. Also there's Ciel Turner, who's life has been full of personal disasters concerning her children, is cared for by Mattie. Another women is Cora Lee, a young unmarried mother with many children, who makes changes to better her life as a single mother after Kiswana helps her. The last story is about two lesbian women Lorraine and Theresa, who are looking to fit in.
It's a very realistic book, dealing with issues, such as teen pregnancy, violence, sex, and rape. It gives you an insight into the culture of some African American women, and some of the struggles they go through, and what they do to over come their hardships.

Gloria Naylor’s novel, The Women of Brewster Place, follows suit with other revolutionary novels in that it takes the painful parts of what it meant to be a woman of that time period and plays them out through intimate relationships, such as mother-son, couples, and mother-children. A book about a community knit together by an assortment of struggles unifying the women with a thread of strength that only comes from perseverance, Naylor effectively and beautifully creates a masterpiece encompassing what it meant to be a woman, not just a woman of color, in a time that women needed to be reminded of their worth and strength. Following this work came the publication of Linden Hills, Mama Day, Bailey’s Café, and The Men of Brewster Place, which sealed her fate in the literary world.

Powerful narratives about women and the trials and tribulations of life at Brewster. Each chapter is a vignette of a woman who eventually ends up at Brewster. I enjoyed how many narratives included a backstory and some were even intertwined with each other. Definitely a book that will stick with you.

On the whole I liked it, but the characters' lives were pretty depressing. I also didn't quite get how Mattie came to be such a Wise Old Elder, when her presence in Brewster Place was due to horrendous bad judgment on her part. There's also a really horrible scene involving one of the other characters at the end -- it made sense dramatically but it totally grossed me out. And I didn't think it was resolved properly, unless you consider a dream sequence a resolution. It didn't help that I liked that character a lot!

This was the first novel of Gloria Naylor's that I read and it was truly awesome. As my assignment this past semester(Jan-May 2000)my professor wanted me to read every novel by Naylor in the order they were written and published. Since I "LOVE" to read and am coordinator of my own book club, this was simple for me. I'd seen the movie, The Women of Brewester Place countless times and loved it.
The Women of Brewester Place is beauitfully written and is a touching story about seven Black women, with only one thing in common. They all reside in Brewester Place, a dead end street with a brick wall to keep them from the other side. These ladies give us a inside view into their lives. We see the trials and tribulations each of them has or come to endure. We see why they live as they do and come to love the strength and courage they come to possess before it's too late for them all. The most compelling part of the book to me was the part entitled, "The Two." This part of the book is heartwarming, gripping and surreal and it truly leaves an impression on you. I cheered for these women as they came into their own and was ready to cuss them for being so naive and passive at times. However, this book was just entertaining as the movie and gives a more indepth look at each of them. One thing I can say , this was a book who's story seemed to have gone straight from the pages to the screen. We rarely see that where books are concern these days. I recommend this heartwarming novel.