Selfhood by means of Sisterhood in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place

Ghada Suleiman Sasa

doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.6p.48

Selfhood by means of Sisterhood in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place

Ghada Suleiman Sasa

Abstract

This paper maintains that The Women of Brewster Place is a novel that celebrates women’s communion and its impact on the fulfillment of their quest of selfhood. It explains the way the novel rejects the restrictive sense of selfhood and calls for a more inclusive selfhood merged in collective experience. Despite the fact that the seven main female characters are totally different, they have shared memories and dreams. The latter plays a central role in women’s unity and fulfillment of selfhood. Shared memories and dreams function as a healing device and a mechanism that activates their collective consciousness and enable them to challenge pain, accomplish communal alliance, and fulfill their quest of selfhood and emancipation.. The women of the novel come to understand the power of their communion stemming initially from their shared memories and dreams. They also come to understand that only a selfhood born within a communal frame can survive and challenge the cycle of abuse they are subject to. As a result, the paper concludes with asserting that the women in the novel collectively break the wall that stands for their seclusion and misery.

Keywords

Black Women, Shared Memories And Dreams, Collective Consciousness, Communal Selfhood, Sisterhood

Full Text:

PDF

References

Andrews, Larry. “Black Sisterhood in Naylor‘s Novels.” Gloria Naylor: Critical

Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah, Amistad Press, 1993, pp.285-301.

Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women: An Idea in Fiction. Harvard UP, 1978.

Awkward, Michael. “Authorial Dreams of Wholeness: (Dis)Unity, (Literary) Parentage, and The Women of Brewster Place”. Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr and K.A. Amistad, 1993,pp.37-70

Ball, Jane L. “The Women Of Brewster Place.” Masterplots, Fourth

Edition, November 2010, pp. 1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web. 1 Dec. 2014.

Barnett, Pamela. Dangerous Desire: Sexual Freedom and Sexual Violence Since

the Sixties. Routledge, 2004.

Christian, Barbara.“Gloria Naylor’s Geography: Community, Class, and Patriarchy In The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills”. New Black Feminist Criticism 1985-2000, edited by Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene R. Keizer. University of Illinois Press, 2007, pp.99-119.

---. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspective on Black Women Writers. Pergamon Press, 1985.

---. New Black Feminist Criticism, 1985-2000, edited by Gloria Bowles, M. Giulia Fabi, and Arlene R. Keizer. University of Illinois Press, 2007.

Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2nd ed., Routledge, 2000.

---. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism. Temple University Press, 2006.

Davies, Carole Boyce. Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migration of the Subject. Routledge, 1994.

DiConsiglio, John. “The Hidden World Of Gloria Naylor.” Literary

Cavalcade,vol. 50, vo.8, 1998,pp. 16. Literary Reference Center. Web. 11 Dec 2014.

Fowler, Virginia C. Gloria Naylor: In Search of Sanctuary. Twayne Publisher, 1996.

Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture

After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press, 2012.

hooks,bell. Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Pluto Press, 1982.

---.Feminism is For EveryBody:Passionate Politics .South End Press, 2000.

---. All About Love: New Visions. Harper Perennial, 2001.

James, Stanlie M. “Mothering: A Possible Black Feminist Link to Social Transformation ?”. Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, edited by Stanlie M. James and Abena P.A. Busia. Routledge, 1993,pp.45.

Labin, Linda L. "The Women Of Brewster Place." Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series, 1995,pp.1-3. Literary Reference Center. Web.Accessed 10 March. 2015.

Matus, Jill. “Dream, Deferral, and Closure in The Women of Brewster Place.”Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah. NY: Amistad, 1993.

Niscosia, Laura . “Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place: Evolution of a Genre”. Narratives of Community: Women’s Short Story Sequences, edited by Roxanne Harde. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007,pp.173-195.

Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. Penguin, 1983.

Puhr, Kathleen M. “Healers in Gloria Naylor's Fiction”. Twentieth Century Literature, vol 40,no.4,1994.pp.518-527.

Rich, Andrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Mary Eagleton. Basil Blackwell, 1986,pp.22-27.

Smith, Barbara. “Toward a Black Feminist Criticism”, Conditions:Two. Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader, edited by Mary Eagleton. Basil Blackwell, 1986,pp. 77-80.

Tannen, Deborah. Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue and Imagery in Conversational Discourse. 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 2007.

Vinson, Sarah F. “Inclusive Memory: The Power of Collective Remembering in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place”. The Limina Editorial Collective, vol.19, no.1,2013, pp. 1-15.

Walker, Karen. “Autonomous, but Not Alone: The Reappropriation of Female Community in The Women of Brewster Place and Housekeeping”.Contemporary Women’s Writing, vol.6, no.1, March 2012, pp. 56-73.

Wang, Qi. “On the Cultural Constitution of Collective Memory.” Memory, vol 16, no.3, 2008,pp 305-17.

Zagarell, Sandra. ‘‘Narrative of Community: The Identification of a Genre”. Narratives of Community: Women’s Short Story Sequences, edited by Roxanne Harde. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007,pp.449-479.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.11n.6p.48

Refbacks

There are currently no refbacks.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.

Username
Password
Remember me