Two of Gloria NaylorÆs books, The Women of Brewster Place and The Men of Brewster place feature the same characters and location. The location is Brewster Place, a deteriorating tenement where African American inhabitants come to live more by circumstance than by choice. There are many similarities between the two works, including structure, as each of the works contains seven different sections narrated respectively by the women and men who live in Brewster Place. Another similarity is the overriding theme of the search for identity and solidarity among a group of disparate African Americans who often abuse each other as much as offering nurturing and compassion. However, in The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor presents a group of women who seem largely victimized by African American males. In contrast, in The Men of Brewster Place, the author provides the male perspective, with characters who were abusive or neglectful in the first book coming back to Brewster Place to ôconfess and atone,ö (Hoffman, p. 1). This analysis will compare and contrast these two works with a focus on the victimization of Black women at the hands of Black men but how Black women are often culpable in such relationships. A conclusion will address the similar theme of the two works.
The Women of Brewster Place features a collection of women living in a dilapidated tenement whose lives are filled with laundry, cooking, and diapering babies. The womenÆs lives are also filled with emotional pain, physical and sexual abuse, and tragedy primarily inflicted upon them from Black men. Lucielia (ôCeilö) is married to Eugene, whose daughter dies when she sticks a fork in an electric socket in part due to EugeneÆs neglect of his child. C. C. Baker, the epitome of male machismo, terrorizes and rapes the women of Brewster Place. Ben is an alcoholic who abandons his daughter and is beaten to death by an outraged rape victim. Basil is MattieÆs son, who...