By HERB BOYD
Special to the AmNews
In her novel, “The Women of Brewster Place,” Gloria Naylor wove the stories of seven women into a seamless tapestry of dreams and reality. Brewster Place itself was almost anthropomorphic, “a bastard child,” Naylor wrote. Naylor, 66, who won the National Book Award for her first novel, died Wednesday near her home in Christiansted, Virgin Islands. According to her niece, Cheryl Rance, she died of heart failure. This report was later
confirmed by Naylor’s sister.
Most readers first encountered Naylor with her debut novel and were introduced to an ensemble of women who, in their separate ways, captured many of the issues that resonated so brightly in Naylor’s imagination. If Cora Lee’s maternal impulse didn’t corral you, there was Kiswana’s undying political resolve. But Brewster Place, from dawn to dusk, is an equally compelling character.
Born Jan. 25, 1950, in Harlem, Naylor, a shy child, was a voracious reader. She attended Brooklyn College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English, and received her master’s degree in the subject from Yale University. It was a tour of several jobs, including telephone operator, before she seriously pursued a writing career.
With publication of “The Women of Brewster Place,” when she was 32, Naylor was, as they say, an overnight success. Six years later the novel got more exposure when Oprah Winfrey adapted it and turned it into a television miniseries. Winfrey headed a cast that included Cicely
Tyson and Robin Givens.
Naylor credited her mother for her literary accomplishments. “Realizing that I was a painfully shy child, she gave me my first diary and told me to write my feelings down in there,” she said. “Over the years, that diary was followed by reams and reams of paper that eventually culminated into ‘The Women of Brewster Place.’ And I wrote that book as a tribute to her and other Black women who, in spite of the very limited personal circumstances, somehow manage to hold a fierce belief in the limitless possibilities of the human spirit.”
Not only did “The Women of Brewster Place” win the National Book Award in the first novel category, it also received an American Book Award in 1983; Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” won
the best novel that year.
“Linden Hills” (1985), “Mama Day” (1988), “Bailey’s Café” (1992) and “The Men of Brewster Place” (1999) were her other books, along with a number of essays and reviews.
Among her many awards was the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1985; Candace Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, 1986; a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988; and the Lillian Smith Award in 1989. She taught at New York University and the University of Pennsylvania, as
well as at other colleges.
And while her Brewster Place is “abandoned, the living smells worn thin by seasons of winds,” she wrote, Brewster Place
“still waits to die.”
Along with her niece, Cheryl, and her sister, Bernice, Naylor is survived by her nephew.