Gloria Naylor

The National Book Award-winning novel—and contemporary classic—that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor “[A] shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . . Miss Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly.” —The New York Times Book Review This e-book includes a foreword by Tayari Jones. In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Adapted into a 1989 ABC miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey, The Women of Brewster Place is a touching and unforgettable read.

The Women of Brewster Place

The evocative and poignant stories of the wounded and exiled denizens of a 1940s diner capture the pathos, power, and humor of the human spirit

Bailey's Cafe

Lester Tilson and Willie Mason, a pair of hip, latter-day poets, work their way down through Linden Hills, experiencing firsthand the lust, pain, hypocrisy, and valor of the hell-bound upper- and middle-class residents

Linden Hills

After buying a house on St. Helena Island off the coast of South Carolina intending to relax and write in peace, an African-American author finds her tranquility ruined when a Jewish neighbor who feels threatened by her presence launches a large surveillance operation.

Nineteen Ninety-six

The National Book Award-winning novel—and contemporary classic—that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor, now with a foreword by Tayari Jones “[A] shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . . Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly.” —The New York Times Book Review “Brims with inventiveness—and relevance.” —NPR's Fresh Air In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable read.

A Novel in Seven Stories

Collected interviews with the author of The Women of Brewster Place, The Men of Brewster Place, and Linden Hills

Conversations with Gloria Naylor

A “wonderful novel” steeped in the folklore of the South from the New York Times–bestselling author of The Women of Brewster Place (The Washington Post Book World). On an island off the coast of Georgia, there’s a place where superstition is more potent than any trappings of the modern world. In Willow Springs, the formidable Mama Day uses her powers to heal. But her great niece, Cocoa, can’t wait to get away. In New York City, Cocoa meets George. They fall in love and marry quickly. But when she finally brings him home to Willow Springs, the island’s darker forces come into play. As their connection is challenged, Cocoa and George must rely on Mama Day’s mysticism. Told from multiple perspectives, Mama Day is equal parts star-crossed love story, generational saga, and exploration of the supernatural. Hailed as Gloria Naylor’s “richest and most complex” novel, it is the kind of book that stays with you long after the final page (Providence Journal).

A Novel

Mama Day

Three lyrical and unforgettable novels from the National Book Award–winning author of The Women of Brewster Place. After winning both the National Book Award and the American Book Award for her now iconic debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place, which was later made into a TV miniseries starring Oprah Winfrey, Gloria Naylor continued to garner acclaim as one of the most original voices in twentieth-century American literature with novels such as Mama Day, Linden Hills, and Bailey’s Cafe. Mama Day: On Willow Springs, an island off the coast between Georgia and South Carolina, superstition is more potent than any trappings of the modern world. Here, the formidable Mama Day uses her powers to heal. But her great-niece, Cocoa, can’t wait to escape to New York City. When Cocoa returns to the island with her husband, George, darker forces challenge the couple—and their only hope may be the mystical matriarch. Steeped in the folklore of the South and inspired by Shakespeare, Mama Day is one of Naylor’s “richest and most complex” novels (Providence Journal). “[A] wonderful novel, full of spirit and sass and wisdom, and completely realized.” —The Washington Post Linden Hills: For its wealthy African American residents, the exclusive neighborhood of Linden Hills is a symbol of making it. But what happens when the dream of material success turns out to be an empty promise? Using Dante’s Inferno as a model, Naylor reveals the true cost of success for the lost souls of Linden Hills—a hell of their own making. “Every page contains a brilliant insight, a fine description, some petty and human, some grandiloquent.” —Chicago Tribune Bailey’s Cafe: This “moving and memorable” national bestseller is set in post–World War II Brooklyn, on a quiet backstreet, where Bailey’s Cafe serves as a crossroads for a broad range of patrons, a place of limbo for tortured souls before they move on—or check out (Boston Globe). “A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humor.” —The New York Times Book Review

Mama Day, Linden Hills, and Bailey's Cafe

The Novels of Gloria Naylor

BIOGRAPHY ¨ LITERARY criticism ¨ AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES--> In 1982, one year after graduating from Brooklyn College, Gloria Naylor (b. 1950) made her debut on the literary scene with The Women of Brewster Place. The novel was critically acclaimed, filmed as a made-for-television movie, and turned into a television miniseries. Naylor's output now includes five novels, an edited collection of short stories, two theater projects, and a series of articles, essays, notes, and an unpublished work that combines fiction and nonfiction. Conversations with Gloria Naylor collects her interviews and shows her to be one of the most talented novelists to emerge in the past twenty years. The fourteen interviews that are included range from 1983, soon after the publication of her first novel, to 2000, following the publication of The Men of Brewster Place. Altogether they shed light on Naylor in all her wit, wisdom, and candor. She is the first among the current generation of African American women novelists to have made a study of her literary predecessors. Interviews with her are compelling in their revelation of the evolutionary journey of a self-professed introvert and dreamer who is as indebted to the English classics as she is to blues, jazz, or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. An indispensable resource for a study of Naylor's life and art, Conversations with Gloria Naylor offers rare insight into works that are in the vanguard of contemporary American literature. Maxine Lavon Montgomery, is an associate professor of English at Florida State University and the author of The Apocalypse in African-American Fiction. Her work has been published in African-American Review, College Language Association Journal, the Literary Griot, and Obsidian II: African-American Literature in Review.

In 1969, Little, Brown and Company published The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, edited by Langston Hughes - the classic compendium of African-American short fiction from 1897 to 1967. Now, a quarter of a century later, Gloria Naylor has compiled an encore volume, Children of the Night, bringing this extraordinary series up to date. Gathering together the most gifted black writers of our time - from 1967 to the present - Naylor has assembled a rich and varied collection of stories. The portrait that emerges of the African-American experience in the post-Civil Rights era is stirring, compelling, sometimes disturbing, and certainly provocative. Naylor has arranged the stories thematically so the reader focuses on a particular subject - slavery, for example, or the family. In the hands of different writers, these themes provide a wealth and variety of human experience. The stories are more than testimonies of the long battle for survival. From a young woman's struggles with her barren faith in Alice Walker's lyrical "The Diary of an African Nun" to an innocent man's involvement in a horrifying act of violence in Ann Petry's "The Witness", they are, as Naylor states in her introduction, "examples of affirmation: of memory, of history, of family, of being". They are stories for all of us "at the beginning: of mankind as a species; of America as a nation; of the African-American as a full citizen".

The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to Present

Children of the Night

"Gloria Naylor's first published book of fiction won her the American Book Award. The Women of Brewster Place was a dramatic launch for a successful literary career that is still on the ascendant. Like Alice Walker, Naylor has earned a reputation associated with both critical and commercial success; she is respected in academic circles and acknowledged in the world of popular culture. Both have had a best-selling novel translated into successful movies. Both are recognized as well for speaking out for the rights of women and on other social issues." "Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present documents the contributions of her work to the African-American and American literary traditions. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah collected reviews that, Gates says, "attest to Naylor's important, if sometimes controversial, place in the expanding canon of American letters." Culled from newspapers and magazines, reviews from writers such as Donna Rifkind have identified her as having a "commanding fictional voice" that "at its best, it's the kind of voice that moves you along as if you were dreaming. But it runs the risk, at its worst, of overpowering the voices of her own carefully imagined characters."" "Naylor's work impresses scholars in part because she herself is one. Her novels are ambitious creations often inspired by her appreciation of literary masters such as Shakespeare, Dante, Morrison. Linden Hills, for example, is an adaptation of Dante's Inferno, while Mama Day wears the impression of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon." "Gates and Appiah make the point, though, that Naylor is her own person. In one of the essays chosen for this volume Peter Erickson writes, "Naylor's work provides a valuable test case for how we are going to formulate a multicultural approach to literary studies. Naylor's interest in Shakespeare neither translates into kinship nor supports a mode of continuity; the main note is rather one of conflict and difference.... Shakespeare does not assimilate Naylor; Naylor assimilates Shakespeare."" "This unique and revealing collection includes the wisdom and insight of other important figures in contemporary literature as well as a chronology of Naylor's life and career. There are novelists Rita Mae Brown, Bharati Mukherjee, and Sherley Ann Williams, as well as Barbara Christian, author of Black Feminist Literary Criticism. These informed perspectives offer academics and lay readers alike insight into Naylor the artist and Naylor the woman."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Critical Perspectives Past and Present

Il y a Mattie, la matriarche, Etta Mae, invincible au volant de sa Cadillac, Kiswana, la révoltée, baby Cora Lee, Ciel, et les deux filles du n° 312. Toutes échouées à Brewster Place, ghetto noir du nord des Etats-Unis, au coeur des 70's. Sept femmes qui résistent - à la misère, à la violence, à l'intolérance. Sept destins, unis par un espoir farouche. Roman culte de la littérature afro-américaine, saluant Toni Morrison et Alice Walker, ce portrait choral vibrant d'émotions brutes est une ode aux héroïnes de la marge. Magnifique.

Gloria Naylor

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