Volume I Special Issue I September 2021

Name of Author : Dr. R Prabhakar & Mr. B S S Bhagavan

Title of the paper : Assertion of Female Identity in Gloria Naylor’s ‘The Women of Brewster Place’

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to analyze Gloria Naylor‟s „The Women of Brewster Place‟ and to examine Naylor‟s concept of collective womanhood. Gloria Naylor, the renowned Afro-American writer represented the miserable lives of doubly suppressed Black women and their struggle for existence. In the patriarchal society, the class, race, and gender discriminations made the lives of Black women vulnerable. Many Afro-American women writers presented the Black women‟s quest for identity and individual freedom. Gloria Naylor in her first novel „The Women of Brewster Place‟, opposed the traditional and restricted definition of selfhood and ridiculed the importance of individual fight for emancipation. Naylor through this novel strongly advocated the importance of collective womanhood and urged all suppressed women to fight unitedly to establish a new society where women experience dignity. Naylor depicted the stories of seven Black women and their struggle for existence. The novelist very cautiously portrayed the life experiences of various women and connected the protagonist‟s life with these deprived women. Through the story of Mattie and other Black Women in „The Women of Brewster Place‟, the novelist was strongly arguing the impact of collective effort of the deprived women in fulfilling their quest for selfhood. Hence this paper focuses on the concept of collective womanhood and Gloria Naylor‟s views on the emancipation of Black women.

Keywords : Black Women, Discrimination, Collective Womanhood, Doubly Suppressed, Emancipation, Quest, Selfhood, Dignity, Unitedly.

DOI :

Page Number : 47-51