The Women of Brewster Place: Novel Examines the Female African American Experience

The Women of Brewster Place is a tribute to the African-American female experience. The novel focuses on seven women, struggling to survive in a world that has never been kind to African-Americans or women. Their environment further complicates their lives. Brewster Place is an impoverished and threatening neighborhood. Each woman, in her own way, plays an integral part in the making of Brewster Place.

The women are forced to rely on each other when the world seems to shut them out. Despite their differences, the women of Brewster Place are bound by a sense of community and sisterhood that enables them to deal with the everyday pressures they face in the male-dominated society in which they live. This is best exemplified in the relationship between Cora Lee and Kiswana and the relationship between Mattie and Ciel.

Being a single mother can be a stressful situation at times. In The Women of Brewster Place, Cora Lee is a single mother struggling to raise her children. As a child, Cora Lee only wanted one thing for Christmas every year, a new doll. On her thirteenth Christmas, her father denies her a new baby doll. When her mother tells her that she already has too many in her room, Cora informs her that "they don't smell and feel the same way as the new ones" (109).

Cora adopts this philosophy and soon after starts having babies of her own. She is obsessed with new babies and spends all of her time caring for the baby of the family. Once a baby becomes a toddler, she is tired of the child, and she is ready for a new baby.

When her story starts, she has seven children, many by different fathers. Cora Lee has relationship with two of the fathers but both had negative outcomes, for one beat her and the other left. The others are referred to as shadows: "And then only the shadows - who came in the night and showed her the thing that felt good in the dark, and often left before the children awakened, which was so much better…no more bruised eyes because of a baby's crying.

The thing that felt good in the dark would sometimes bring the new babies, and that's all she cared to know" (113-4). In Cora's mind, the men are simply a means to an end. Cora Lee has no interest in anything except her babies. In her essay on Naylor and community, Barbara Christian suggests that Cora Lee lives "in a fantasy world, interrupted only by the growing demands of the human beings she has birthed"(112). She does not care about the men who impregnate her, only with the end results.

When Kiswana Browne comes to Cora Lee's door to tell her that one of her children has been eating out of a trashcan, Cora Lee is offended. She thinks that Kiswana is implying that she is a bad mother. However, Kiswana is simply trying to be a good neighbor. She invites Cora Lee to bring the kids to an all black production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Because she wants to impress Kiswana and show her that she can be a good mother, Cora accepts the offer. After the play, Kiswana is touched by Cora Lee's appreciation: "Kiswana was slightly taken aback by this burst of emotion from the woman" (127).

After seeing the play, Cora Lee " begins to think of the possibilities of her children that are no longer babies" (Christian 113). Kiswana's concern helps Cora Lee to see the importance of all of her children, not just the babies. She also "contributes to restoring Cora Lee's self-esteem both as a person and as a mother" (Andrews 289). Their relationship is another example of the ability of women to be there for each other in times of need when men are nothing more than "shadows." Cora Lee's new found sisterhood with Kiswana enables her see the possibility of a better and brighter future.

In "Lucielia Louise Turner," we are reintroduced to the character of Ciel. We see her first as a young child in the chapter "Mattie Michael." Mattie and Ciel, although they represent two different generations, rely on one another and complement each other. Mattie has a special way with words. She does not have to say a lot or talk too loudly to get her point across: "It was rare that Mattie ever spoke more than two sentences to anybody about anything. She didn't have to.

She chooses her words with a grinding precision of a diamond cutter's drill" (91). Ciel, on the other hand, has trouble expressing what she wants to say. Her words "kept circling in such a confusing pattern before her that she couldn't seem to grab even one" (91). Ciel plays the role of a child-seeking acceptance. She looks to Mattie for knowledge and wisdom about how to handle situations in her life. She values Mattie's experience and often looks to her for motherly approval. And for Mattie, Ciel is like the perfect child. Mattie made many mistakes with her own son and now has the opportunity to correct those mistakes with Ciel.

Now Ciel is an adult struggling in her relationship with her live-in boyfriend, Eugene. While Cora Lee wants nothing to do with the men in her life, Ciel is the complete opposite. Ciel and Eugene have a child together, and Ciel dreams that one day they will be a real family and that Eugene will be a wonderful husband and a loving father to their daughter, Serena. Ciel's idealistic fantasy is crushed by the reality that Eugene has just lost his job and feels incapable of supporting her, Serena, and their unborn child. Ciel does not want to face the reality of her situation.

She feels that she has no other options. In an attempt to keep her dream alive, Ciel aborts her unborn baby in hopes of keeping Eugene. This experience causes her tremendous grief, and she is unable to go back to her life and feel normal: The next few days Ciel found it difficult to connect herself up again with her own world.… She became terribly possessive of Serena. She refused to leave her alone, even with Eugene. The little girl went everywhere with Ciel, toddling along on plump uncertain legs.

When someone asked to hold or play with her, Ciel sat nearby, watching every move. She found herself walking into the bedroom several times when the child napped to see if she was still breathing. Each time she chided herself for this unreasonable foolishness, but within the next few minutes some strange force still drove her back. (95-96). Ciel becomes irrational and she lets her fears overtake her and consume her thoughts. Ciel knows that she has changed, but she is unable to stop herself.

Ciel reaches her lowest point when shortly after her abortion, Eugene announces that he is leaving town and is not taking her and Serena with him. She realizes that all she has done for him has been in vain. She is just about to get Serena and leave when she hears a scream. Serena has been electrocuted. While arguing with Eugene, she briefly takes her eyes off of Serena and her fears are realized. The death of Serena is a very tragic event that proves to be yet another shattered dream for Ciel, and once again it is caused, indirectly, by a man

After Serena's death, Ciel is literally dying of grief and pain. She "was simply tired of hurting" does not want to live anymore (101). This is when she needs Mattie the most. Mattie and Ciel have a strong bond, similar to that between Mattie and her son Basil. The same nurturing nature that Mattie showed with Basil is apparent in her actions toward Ciel. She has a genuine desire to protect Ciel from hurt, harm, or danger: "Like a black Brahman cow, desperate to protect her young, she surged into the room, pushing the neighbor woman and the others out of her way" (103).

The magnitude of Mattie's maternal love for Ciel is made evident in this single gesture. Seeing that Ciel is slowly dying, right in front of her, Mattie reaches out to her and forces her to realize what she is doing to herself. Mattie literally rocks Ciel back to life and gets her to release the pain that she has been holding inside: She sat on the edge of the bed and enfolded the tissue thin body in her huge ebony arms.

And she rocked.…Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time….She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled - and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them.

They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal. (103-4) Mattie is attempting to heal the wounds that Serena's death has left behind. Mattie then bathes Ciel and puts her to bed. This is another maternal action on the part of Mattie. However, in his essay on Black sisterhood, Andrews points out that the bond between Ciel and Mattie is more than mother daughter; it is woman to woman.

They share similar experiences. Andrews argues that "what Mattie and Ciel come to share in Mattie's act of primal mothering is their isolation, their burden of responsibility as mothers, and the loss of their children" (288). The entire process of becoming clean symbolizes Ciel shaking off her old life and everything negative about it. For so long, her life has been dependent upon what her man wanted, and it led to her destruction.

With Mattie's help, Ciel is able to regroup and start over. Mattie also is able to help herself in the process: "To some degree when Mattie saves Ciel, she also saves herself, and the ritual bathing that she performs on Ciel becomes a testament to the healing powers of sisterly love and bonding, particularly in the face of a chauvinistic, male-centered world" (Wilson 48). The relationship between Mattie and Ciel exemplifies the powerful sisterhood and community that the women of Brewster Place share.

In The Women of Brewster Place, the women find themselves in situations in which they feel isolated from the rest of the world. They are forced to rely on one another. But they are also joined in community by loss. Every woman in Brewster Place has suffered or now suffers some loss. Yet the women Naylor writes about are not simply victims; one woman's knowledge of pain and ability to survive can be passed on to another, just as Mattie's understanding and strength help save Ciel and begin her healing.

Also Kiswana's knowledge of a better life rekindles Cora Lee's belief in herself and her abilities as a mother. In The Women of Brewster Place, Naylor sets out tell the story of the African-American woman and the struggles that she endures. In each of the stories, we see a woman overcoming an obstacle with the help of the women around her. Together the women of Brewster Place withstand the pressures of loss and pain that threaten to destroy their lives and overcome the barriers of living in a man's world.