Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor was an influential American author known for her poignant explorations of African American life, identity, and community. Her literary journey began in childhood, ignited by a journal gifted by her mother, which fostered her love for writing. After a period of missionary work with the Jehovah's Witnesses, Naylor pursued higher education at Brooklyn College, where she was inspired by the works of notable black authors such as Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. Her first novel, *The Women of Brewster Place* (1982), achieved critical acclaim, winning the National Book Award and later being adapted into a film.
Naylor's works often center around enclosed black communities, where characters navigate their identities and experiences of materialism and spirituality. Notable titles include *Linden Hills* (1985) and *Mama Day* (1988), the latter of which features a blend of ordinary life and magical realism. Through her narratives, Naylor portrayed complex multigenerational characters whose lives reflect rich cultural histories. Despite her achievements, she valued solitude and chose not to remarry or have children, instead dedicating her life to writing and teaching. Naylor's contributions to literature have established her as a significant voice in African American fiction.
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Subject Terms
Gloria Naylor
Author
- Born: January 25, 1950
- Birthplace: New York, New York
Author Profile
When she gave her introverted daughter a journal from Woolworth’s, Gloria Naylor’s mother opened the door to writing. In high school, two experiences shaped Naylor’s emerging identity: nineteenth century English literature taught her that language can be a powerful tool, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1968 assassination turned her to missionary work. Instead of going to college, for the next seven years she traveled as a Jehovah’s Witness, abandoning the work in 1975, when she began to feel constrained by the lifestyle.
At Brooklyn College, her introduction to black history and the discovery of such literary foremothers as Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison gave her the inspiration to try writing herself. Completing her first novel, the best-seller The Women of Brewster Place (1982), signified, she has indicated, her taking hold of herself and attempting to take her destiny into her own hands. The book won the 1983 National Book Award in the First Novel category and was adapted for film in 1989 by Oprah Winfrey's HARPO Productions. In 1998 Naylor wrote a follow-up to The Women of Brewster Place, which was titled The Men of Brewster Place. The book returns to the fictional setting of the previous novel but instead focuses on the exploration of the gender traits of black men.
After winning a scholarship to Yale University, Naylor discovered that for her, graduate training was incompatible with writing fiction. She nevertheless completed a master’s degree in 1983 when the Afro-American Studies department allowed the manuscript of her second novel, Linden Hills (1985), to fulfill the thesis requirement. Linden Hills illustrates the effects of materialism on an elite all-black community that lacks a spiritual center.
The central feature of all of Naylor’s novels is an enclosed black community where characters learn to embrace their identities in the context of place. Naylor’s powerful settings combine elements of the ordinary with the otherworldly, allowing for magical events and mythic resolutions. For example, Mama Day (1988) takes place on the imaginary island of Willow Springs and weaves the history of the Day family from the point of view of the powerful matriarch Mama Day, a conjure woman. Naylor’s own family history provides her with a rich sense of community, but she paradoxically treasures solitude. Married briefly, she refuses to remarry or have children and teaches writing to keep from being too much of a recluse. Naylor’s strength is portraying convincing multigenerational characters in specific settings.
In addition to receiving the National Book Award, Naylor has been granted a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1985, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1988, and the Lillian Smith Award in 1989 for Mama Day.
Bibliography
Braxton, Joanne M., and Andrée Nicola McLaughlin, eds. Wild Women in the Whirlwind: Afro-American Culture and the Contemporary Literary Renaissance. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Print.
Diedrich, Maria, Henry Louis Gates Jr, and Carl Pedersen. Black Imagination and the Middle Passage. New York: Oxford UP, 2014. Print.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad, 1993. Print.
Gordon, Ed. "'1996': Under the Watchful Eye of the Government." NPR. NPR, 23 Jan. 2006. Web. 27 Mar. 2015.
Kelley, Margot Anne, ed. Gloria Naylor’s Early Novels. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. Print.
Montgomery, Maxine Lavon. “Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café.” African American Review 29, no. 1 (Spring, 1995): 27. Print.
Mukherjee, Radhika Subhankar. "Sisters and Healers in Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place." European Academic Research I.9 (2013): 2668–81. PDF file.
Naylor, Gloria. “An Interview with Gloria Naylor.” Interview by Charles H. Rowell. Callaloo 20, no. 1 (Winter, 1997): 179–92. Print.
Naylor, Gloria, and Toni Morrison. “A Conversation.” The Southern Review 21 (Summer, 1985): 567–93. Print.
Puhr, Kathleen M. “Healers in Gloria Naylor’s Fiction.” Twentieth Century Literature 40, no. 4 (Winter, 1994): 518. Print.
Rowell, Charles H. “An Interview with Gloria Naylor.” Callaloo 20, no. 1 (Winter, 1997): 179–92. Print.
Stave, Shirley A., ed. Gloria Naylor: Strategy and Technique, Magic and Myth. Newark: Delaware University Press, 2001. Print.
Whitt, Margaret Earley. Understanding Gloria Naylor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. Print.