The Women of Brewster Place
A Novel in Seven Stories
(Sprache: Englisch)
The National Book Award-winning novel and contemporary classic that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor, now with a foreword by Tayari Jones
...
...
Jetzt vorbestellen
versandkostenfrei
Buch (Gebunden)
32.90 €
- Lastschrift, Kreditkarte, Paypal, Rechnung
- Kostenlose Rücksendung
Produktdetails
Produktinformationen zu „The Women of Brewster Place “
Klappentext zu „The Women of Brewster Place “
The National Book Award-winning novel and contemporary classic that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor, now with a foreword by Tayari Jones[A] shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . . Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly. The New York Times Book Review
Brims with inventiveness and relevance. NPR's Fresh Air
In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable read.
Lese-Probe zu „The Women of Brewster Place “
DawnBrewster Place was the bastard child of several clandestine meetings between the alderman of the sixth district and the managing director of Unico Realty Company. The latter needed to remove the police chief of the sixth district because he was too honest to take bribes and so had persisted in harassing the gambling houses the director owned. In turn, the alderman wanted the realty company to build their new shopping center on his cousin's property in the northern section of town. They came together, propositioned, bargained, and slowly worked out the consummation of their respective desires. As an afterthought, they agreed to erect four double-housing units on some worthless land in the badly crowded district. This would help to abate the expected protests from the Irish community over the police chief's dismissal; and since the city would underwrite the costs, and the alderman could use the construction to support his bid for mayor in the next election, it would importune neither man. And so in a damp, smoke-filled room, Brewster Place was conceived.
It was born three months later in the city legislature, and since its true parentage was hidden, half the community turned out for its baptism two years later. They applauded wildly as the smiling alderman smashed a bottle of champagne against the edge of one of the buildings. He could hardly be heard over the deafening cheers as he told them, with a tear in the corner of his eye, it was the least he could do to help make space for all their patriotic boys who were on the way home from the Great War.
The gray bricks of the buildings were the color of dull silver during Brewster Place's youth. Although the street wasn't paved-after a heavy rain it was necessary to wade in ankledeep to get home-there was a sense of promise in the street and in the times. The city was growing and prospering; there were plans for a new boulevard just north of the street, and it
... mehr
seemed as if Brewster Place was to become part of the main artery of the town.
The boulevard became a major business district, but in order to control traffic some of the auxiliary streets had to be walled off. There was a fierce battle in the city legislature between the representatives of these small veins because they knew they were fighting for the lifeblood of their community, but there was no one to fight for Brewster Place. The neighborhood was now filled with people who had no political influence; people who were dark haired and mellow-skinned-Mediterraneans-who spoke to each other in rounded guttural sounds and who brought strange foods to the neighborhood stores. The older residents were offended by the pungent smells of strong cheeses and smoked meats that now hung in the local shops. So the wall came up and Brewster Place became a dead-end street. There were no crowds at this baptism, which took place at three oÕclock in the morning when Mrs. ColliganÕs son, stumbling home drunk and forgetting the wall was there, bloodied his nose and then leaned over and vomited against the new bricks.
Brewster Place had less to offer the second generation of children-those of its middle years-but it did what it could for them. The street was finally paved under the WPA program, and a new realty company picked up the mortgage on the buildings. Cut off from the central activities of the city, the street developed a personality of its own. The people had their own language and music and codes. They prided themselves on the fact that Mrs. Fuelli's store was the only one in the city that carried scungilli and spinach fettucine. But it broke Mrs. Fuelli's heart when her son returned from the war and didn't settle on Brewster Place, and her cousin's son didn't either, or her second-floor neighbor's. And there were the sons who never returned at all. Brewster Place mourned with these mothers because it had lost children also-to the call of a mo
The boulevard became a major business district, but in order to control traffic some of the auxiliary streets had to be walled off. There was a fierce battle in the city legislature between the representatives of these small veins because they knew they were fighting for the lifeblood of their community, but there was no one to fight for Brewster Place. The neighborhood was now filled with people who had no political influence; people who were dark haired and mellow-skinned-Mediterraneans-who spoke to each other in rounded guttural sounds and who brought strange foods to the neighborhood stores. The older residents were offended by the pungent smells of strong cheeses and smoked meats that now hung in the local shops. So the wall came up and Brewster Place became a dead-end street. There were no crowds at this baptism, which took place at three oÕclock in the morning when Mrs. ColliganÕs son, stumbling home drunk and forgetting the wall was there, bloodied his nose and then leaned over and vomited against the new bricks.
Brewster Place had less to offer the second generation of children-those of its middle years-but it did what it could for them. The street was finally paved under the WPA program, and a new realty company picked up the mortgage on the buildings. Cut off from the central activities of the city, the street developed a personality of its own. The people had their own language and music and codes. They prided themselves on the fact that Mrs. Fuelli's store was the only one in the city that carried scungilli and spinach fettucine. But it broke Mrs. Fuelli's heart when her son returned from the war and didn't settle on Brewster Place, and her cousin's son didn't either, or her second-floor neighbor's. And there were the sons who never returned at all. Brewster Place mourned with these mothers because it had lost children also-to the call of a mo
... weniger
Autoren-Porträt von Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor (1950 2016) grew up in New York City. She received her BA in English from Brooklyn College and her MA in Afro-American Studies from Yale University. Her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983. She is also the author of Linden Hills, Mama Day, Bailey's Cafe, and The Men of Brewster Place.Tayari Jones (foreword) is the New York Times bestselling author of An American Marriage, which was an Oprah's Book Club Selection and a favorite of Barack Obama, as well as Silver Sparrow, The Untelling, and Leaving Atlanta. She is a professor-at-large at Cornell University and a professor of creative writing at Emory University.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Gloria Naylor
- 2021, 208 Seiten, mit farbigen Abbildungen, Maße: 13,5 x 20,3 cm, Gebunden, Englisch
- Verlag: PENGUIN CLASSICS
- ISBN-10: 014313616X
- ISBN-13: 9780143136163
- Erscheinungsdatum: 17.07.2021
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
"[Naylor's] ardent inventiveness as a storyteller and the complex individuality she gives to each of her seven main characters make the novel so much more than a contrived literary assembly line. . . . Deftly, Naylor gathers all these individual stories into one climactic narrative that works through the reader via a word-by-word sense of horror and outrage. . . . The Women of Brewster Place, born of the details of a particular time and community, also turns out to be one of those, yes, universal stories depicting how we, the fallen, seek grace. Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air
The most refreshing voice in the black idiom since readers first discovered Toni Morrison.
Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land
Naylor creates a completely believable, and very frightening, world of degradation, violence and human very human courage and sturdiness.
Chicago Sun-Times
Vibrating with undisguised emotion, The Women of Brewster Place springs from the same roots that produces the blues. Like them, [Naylor s] book sings of sorrow proudly borne by black women in America.
The Washington Post
Kommentar zu "The Women of Brewster Place"
Schreiben Sie einen Kommentar zu "The Women of Brewster Place".
Kommentar verfassen