Authors never begin with nothing when they sit down to write. They begin with their lives and with the stories that they grew up with, which is to say that they begin not only with their own experiences but with those of their parents and all the generations before whose stories and lives are still remembered. When a novelist begins her first book, she begins, at least in part, by unraveling these layers of memory and narrative that form her own life up to that point. And with each successive book she then begins her own process of the layering of stories, so that each new book is in some measure û as hard as it may be to perceive on a first reading û a retelling of the stories that she has told before. This re-mingling of tales is apparent in the works of both Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison.
This paper examines one work by each of these authors û NaylorÆs Linden Hills and MorrisonÆs Beloved, exploring how each of these authors brings into focus issues of class, race, and gender in contemporary American life while at the same time creating complex and self-referential commentaries on the nature of writing, of storytelling, and of creating works that fall within the canon of High Art. The paper examines the work of Naylor in somewhat greater length because this author has been examined in less detail than Morrison.
NaylorÆs first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, chronicled the plight of eight black women living in an urban lower-class cul-de-sac. It is an essentially realistic work with a few stylistic and substantive exceptions, most notably the portrayal of a vicious gang rape that grows to mythic proportions (although it is certainly arguable that such an act might affect the subject of it in precisely this way, even if it is also clear that for Naylor in this book the rape functions metaphorically as well as stylistically). The Women of Brewster Place is NaylorÆs story of how her characters, like real women in their...