Gloria Naylor

“The old man is a-waiting for to carry to freedom / If you follow the drinking gourd” (4-5). This song, and others, encouraged enslaved African-Americans to escape through the Underground Railroad in order to achieve freedom and equality in the North. To this effect, the development of African American slave vernacular and language promoted a distinct identity based off the situation of blacks in the mid-19th century. Slaves became more patriotic and aroused a sense of individualism derived by…

Language is the light of the mind. It is an element of civilization that raised man from hunting and gathering to the like of MLK, Kennedy, Shakespear’s,and ect...Man could not become man except by language. An essential point in which man differs from animals is that man alone is the sole possessor of language. No doubt animals also exhibit certain degree of power of communication but that is not only inferior in degree to human language, but also radically diverse in kind from it. The words of…

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor portrayed the lives of African American residents of Brewster Place. Brewster Place is a community separated by a wall that divided the residents of Brewster Place from the other neighboring. The wall the novel mentioned has a significant meaning to the residents of Brewster Place: home, strength, and destruction. Everyone in the novel all come to Brewster Place after some type of lost or despaired. Mattie Michael as the main character in the novel,…

through his sacrificial death can Ophelia recover from Ruby’s conjuring and inherit the sisterly legacy from the past. George’s death also makes it possible for Miranda to die in peace exactly when she plans to at the beginning of the new century. Naylor does show that the women can transcend men and have power of their own but often at the price of tragic loss for men. The men in the novel tend generously to support the women up to a point and are respected by Miranda for uprightness and…

Portnoy 's Complaint and Mama day are one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century, focusing on family values and traditions passed from one generation to another generation. Even though written in two completely different styles, magical realism and satire, both novels masterfully illustrate a same central subject, a family unit and its heritage. Mama day is a perfect example of a work of magical realism. The author created a work which is at once a tale of the supernatural, a…

Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place explores the backgrounds of several different women whose decisions and experiences have all landed them in the dead end ghetto called Brewster Place. Mattie Michael, one of the most consistent figures in the novel, has been constantly let down by men all her life: her father, the father of her baby, and her son. Mattie’s character, role in the novel, and the different conflicts she faced helped her better connect with the other women of Brewster Place…

way I took it, but who knows how someone who was not capable of understanding his true motive would react. Gloria Naylor believes “Words themselves are innocuous, it is the consensus that gives them true power” (337). She believes the meaning of a word is not what is in the dictionary it is the context in which it is used and what someone response to the word is. I genuinely agree with Naylor in every single way in this situation the phrase it’s not what you say it’s how you say it comes to…

Jewelle Gomez’s essay, ““But Some of Us Are Brave Lesbians: The Absence of Black Lesbian Fiction,” discusses the dearth of modern fiction featuring lesbians of color. In the fashion of a crime expose Gomez describes the factors surrounding the “murder” of black lesbian fiction. After a promising influx in the 1980s, modern fiction involving lesbians of color is almost nonexistent. Just like the families and friends of a murder victim regaling the good old days, Gomez reminisces on what, “now,…

would change would be in the fourth circle in which the avaricious and prodigal are forced to roll stones against one another. If I had written it, these greedy people would have had to work tirelessly under intense physical labor with no pay. “Gloria Naylor 's second novel, Linden Hills, is a modern version of Dante 's Inferno,” (Ward) Some of Dante’s punishments make sense according to him but they take a while for the audience to understand. One of these is the ninth and final circle that…

The use of the N-word is a highly problematic issue in American society. Its roots come from the word "negro", back from the 1700 and 1800’s when it was most prevalent in our society. The “n” word was used by whites as a racial slur, and to degrade and harm anyone of African descent. In addition, the n word was also mentioned to show the white supremacy and achieve greater status in the American hierarchy. However, today,the n word is a highly taboo topic. Despite it noxious effect, it has been…