The Women Of Brewster Place Analysis

The novel, The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor, is the story of six individual characters residing at Brewster Place. Brewster Place is a low-income housing development created by corrupt dealings of city managers. It seems destined to be a hopeless place since the people who created the development were all immoral. Initially, it was built to house the diaspora of Irish and Italian immigrants coming into the city. For many years the development housed this population, but following the Civil Rights Era Brewster Place transforms into a housing development for mainly African-Americans individuals. Many of the African American residents migrate to Brewster Place from the southern United States. The novel highlights the story of each …show more content…
In many ways, Mattie is the foundation of the Brewster Place community. When goes to live in the development she does so knowing that it may be the last place she ever lives. She continues to live her life with a positive attitude, and, in doing so, she is able to add a degree of ease to almost everyone she encounters at Brewster Place. Naylor equates Mattie’s situation to that of her plants: “All the beautiful plants that once had an entire sun porch for themselves in the home she had exchanged thirty years of her life to pay for would now have to fight for life on a crowded windowsill.” (Naylor). Rather than feeling self-pity, Mattie fights for life but also aids the other women in Brewster …show more content…
Mattie Michael’s represents strong black women and serves as a mother figure to many of the residents of Brewster Place. The novel emphasizes the “frantic determination of a people who realized that the world was swiftly changing, but for some mystic, complex reason their burden had not” (Naylor). This quote seeks to explain the hardships faced by African American women. Traditionally, black woman were born of inferior status and judged based on gender and race. Things were changing for African American women but they were still very much oppressed. While black women still experience prejudice they have also been transformed into spirited and strong-minded individuals, much like the character Mattie Michael’s. Mattie experiences a number of hardships throughout her life but she overcomes these struggles in order to encourage others. Brewster Place is located on a dead end street where a wall separates the development from nicer parts of the city. The wall represents prejudice, shame, racism, and sexism. In the final story of the novel, Mattie has a dream that she and the other women tear down the wall that separates Brewster Place from the rest of the city. The novel ends with all of the residents being forced out of Brewster Place. The development is abandoned but the memories the women experienced there will