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The Women of Brewster Place Syllabus June 2020 © 2019 BHK LLC The Women of Brewster Place Syllabus June 2020 © 2019 BHK LLC. All Rights Reserved. #SmartBrownGirl is a Registered Trademark of BHK LLC. For the Black girls in the forgotten spaces. Bringing together an international community of women of color through reading and dialogue. All SmartBrownGirl® Book Club syllabi and reading guides are curated by a cohort of graduate level #SmartBrownGirl researchers. Your membership and participation in the #SmartBrownGirl Book Club ensures that we can pay all Black women who help run this book club an equitable rate. Smartbrowngirl.com The Women of Brewster Place Syllabus Author: Bry Reed Editor: Jouelzy Facebook | Instagram Table of Contents 06 Author History 07 Book History 08 Reading Tips 09 Overview & Motifs 10 The Discussion 16 Final Thoughts 19 Further Reading/Resources Author History Gloria Naylor, born on January 25th 1950, was the daughter of Southern sharecroppers who migrated to New York during The Great Migration. As a young girl, Naylor’s mother encouraged her to read and keep a journal. Her love for journaling developed into an affinity for creative writing and Naylor began to explore poetry and short stories. Following her passion for writing, she attended Brooklyn College where she earned her Bachelor’s Degree in English in 1981. While studying English, she specialized in Black Women’s Literature. She cites Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison as a few of her core influences. Her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place was published in 1982. The following year, she earned her Master’s degree in African American Studies from Yale University. She eventually went on to write several novels and teach at New York University and Cornell University (among others). Naylor’s fiction focuses on the lived experiences of Black women and interrogates the impacts of respectability, love, poverty, and geography on their lives. 6 Book History The Women of Brewster Place is Gloria Naylor’s first novel. In 1983, just one year after its publication, the novel won the National Book Award. It is an anthology style novel that explores the lives of a community of Black women living within the same New York apartment building: Brewster Place. Later in 1989, Oprah Winfrey produced and starred in the television adaptation of the novel. 7 READING TIPS Tips for Fresh Readers TIPS FOR RETURNING 1. You do not have to have profound thoughts right away: Everyone reads and digests at a different pace. Take your READERS time in understanding the text but you do not need to dissect it immediately. Make a note of any points that are significant to you and move on. 1. Put the book in context: Times have changed and so have you. Before rereading 2. Set aside 15-20 mins a day to read: Much like power think about who you were, and where you nap — a power read — can energize your reading and were in life the first time you read the book. help you focus. You do not need large chunks of time. Set Think about who was influencing you/your aside 15-20 mins to read a day and make sure you have no thoughts. (School, friends, family, news etc.) distractions during this time. 2. Be Critical: First reads are a time to be 3. Reflect on what you read: a) What were the open-minded and give the author lead themes and/or major events that had taken place in way to understand their thoughts. Second your selected readings? reads you can be much more critical of the work and its intentions. So get on your 4. Take notes: a) Highlight terms, phrases, quotes etc soapbox boo we got some boxes on that may immediately grab your attention reserve too. 5. Build a personal glossary: If you don’t know a word, 3. Focus on Few Chapters at a Time: circle it, get the definition and reread the section in For non-fiction (and some fiction) it’s not context. This may help you come to a new understanding totally necessary to reread the book of the text or discover concepts you didn’t notice before. chronologically from start to finish. Try focusing on themes that you may have 6. Discuss the book: Healthy discussion on what you grazed over the first time around and already know can entice you to read more and that’s what choose a few chapters to lean into at a time. the #SmartBrownGirl Book Club is here for. Join in on our discussions. Post your questions to the Facebook Group. 7. Author Background: When approaching a text that you’re unfamiliar with, it may be beneficial to do some quick background research on the author, as it can help provide insight on what the text may be discussing. Additionally, this can also expose you to other readings that are centered around the same theoretical concepts (1). Bell Hooks- A’int I a Woman”: Black Women and Feminism, (2) Kimberle Crenshaw (3) Audre Lorde, etc. 8 Trigger Warnings: Child Abuse, Intimate Partner Violence, Death, Sexual Violence When reading gets hard it’s okay to put the book down. It will always be there. We are a reading community and this book is an opportunity to discuss themes that impact the lives of Black women and communities. Overview & Motifs: Note on Naylor: Gloria Naylor is one of the most renowned fiction writers in African American literature. She loved writing books about the South and exploring the ways migration impacted Black life in the United States. She often wrote about the relationships between Black men and women and held no punches when doing so. She used her books as an opportunity to illuminate important themes about abuse, poverty, and violence. Please be gentle with yourselves as you engage her work. Many of these stories may be jarring. Sit with the harder passages and give yourself time to understand the text and how it fits into the broader conversation of Black women’s history, literature, and culture. Motifs: Feminism, Black Feminism, Race, Gender, Black Motherhood, Respectability Politics, Resilience, Housing, Community, Sexual Violence, Sexuality, Homophobia, Queerness, and The Arts Objective: Evaluate Naylor’s writing style (language, character development, etc.) and form your own opinions, highlighting and note taking when you find it appropriate. Her fiction is always beautifully written, consisting of lyrical sentences that give us insight into the world of her vibrant, three dimensional characters. While reading the novel, think about how you would react to each character’s struggles and challenges.Also consider what you would have done differently in these situations, and analyze your thoughts on their actions/beliefs, whether you agree or disagree with Naylor’s assessments on Black womanhood as relating to that particular situation. Character development and voice is essential to this novel as Naylor crafts seven different points of view. As you engage with the text, think about which characters resonate with you. Who do you identify with? What qualities or situations make them relatable? Draw connections between personal and public events that are impacting the characters by recalling the author’s experiences, your own similar ones, relevant news and history. To further your analysis, take note of the motifs included below. Feel free to research them and provide your own understanding of how they connect to the book. Be sure to keep all journaling/note taking for future live discussions, complex and general book syllabi to come. 9 The Discussion HARLEM/BREWSTER PLACE How does Naylor’s story-telling connect to the epigraph she includes from Langston Hughes? Examine the poem copied below: • What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore — And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? • What connections can we make between the epigraph and the ending of ‘Dawn’ that begins the novel? “They were hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding, and easily pleased, these women of Brewster Place. They came, they went, grew up, and grew old beyond their years. Like an ebony phoenix, each in her own time and with her own season had a story.” (p. 5) • What connections can we make to the novel’s closing section, “Dusk”? “They get up and pin those dreams to wet laundry hung out to dry, they’re mixed with a pinch of salt and thrown into pots of soup, and they’re diapered around babies. They ebb and flow, ebb and flow, but never disappear. So Brewster Place still waits to die.” (p. 192) ‣ Does putting these sections in conversation with Hughes’ poem change your understanding of the novel’s setting? • What characteristics would you assign to the physical setting/geography of Brewster Place? Note seven words to describe it. • How does Brewster Place fit into the broader conversation about housing in the United States? ‣ “Brewster Place knew that unlike its other children, the few who would leave forever were to be the exception rather than the rule, since they came because they had no choice and would remain for the same reason.” (p. 4) 10 DAWN • Consider Naylor’s writing style in the first section of the novel. What impact does the language have on you as a reader? • What do you think of when you hear the word dawn? Free-write about the word for a few minutes. What sounds come to mind? What do you see? What colors are there? • Naylor writes, “And so in a damp, smoke-filled room, Brewster Place was conceived.” (p.1) ‣ How does the verb “conceived” contribute to Naylor’s descriptions of Brewster Place throughout the novel? • Naylor describes the changing occupants and culture of Brewster Place over time.
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