Works by
Gloria Naylor
(Writer)
[1950 - ]

Anthologies

• Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present (1995)

Fiction

• The Women of Brewster Place (1982) -- Winner 1983 National Book Award
  In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves the truths and the myths of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak inner-city sanctuary, into a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in today's 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 painful and very ugly human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition. Her ability to establish a memorable sense of place and history makes The Women of Brewster Place a remarkable literary accomplishment and a contemporary classic.
  Movie (1989), Directed by Donna Deitch with Mary Alice and Oprah Winfrey   DVD VHS

• Linden Hills (1985)
  A world away from Brewster Place, yet intimately connected to it, lies Linden Hills. With its showcase homes, elegant lawns, and other trappings of wealth, Linden Hills is not unlike other affluent black communities. But residence in this community is indisputable evidence of "making it." Although no one knows what the precise qualifications are, everyone knows that only certain people get to live there — and that they want to be among them. Once people get to Linden Hills, the quest continues, more subtle, but equally fierce: the goal is a house on Tupelo Drive, the epitome of achievement and visible success. No one notices that the property on Tupelo Drive goes back on sale quickly; no one questions why there are always vacancies at Linden Hills.

  In a resonant novel that takes as its model Dante's Inferno, Gloria Naylor reveals the truth about the American dream — that the price of success may very well be a journey down to the lowest circle of hell.

• Mama Day (1988)
  The bestselling new novel from the American Book Award-winning author is set in a world that is timeless yet indelibly authentic - the Georgia sea island of Willow Springs, where people still practice herbal medicine and honor ancestors who came over as slaves. On Willow Springs lives Mama Day, a matriarch who can call up lightning storms and see secrets in her dreams. But all of Mama Day’s powers are tested by her great-niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman whose life and very soul are now in danger from the island’s darker forces. Mama Day is a powerful generational saga at once tender and suspenseful, overflowing with magic and common sense.

• Bailey's Cafe (1992)
  Set in a diner where the food isn't very good and the ambience veers between heaven and hell, this bestselling novel from the author of Mama Day and The Women of Brewster Place is a feast for the senses and the spirit.

• He's a Russian Jew (1992)

• The Men of Brewster Place (1998)
  In a brilliant new novel, American Book Award winner Naylor revisits the neighborhood that first brought her the respect and affection of readers everywhere. The Men of Brewster Place explores the lives of seven men, and gives readers new insights into the original women characters first met in the best-selling 1982 novel, The Women of Brewster Place, which Oprah Winfrey made into a hugely successful television series.
  
  Whether telling the story of Basil Michael, who finds redemption through his marriage to a woman he doesn't love for the sake of her children, or of Reverend Moreland T. Woods, whose morality has been obscured by his ambition, or of Eugene Turner, whose homosexuality he can no longer hide from himself or the wife he loves, Naylor describes characters that are emblematic both of the issues universal to all men and of experiences specific to the African-American man. In so doing, Naylor gives us a context for understanding real problems of our culture, as well as a richly satisfying reading experience.

• 1996 (2005)
  This fictionalized memoir of the award-winning author, Gloria Naylor, tells a story of a massive covert surveillance operation perpetrated against her by an official of the U.S. government. This domestic spying both destroys the peace and tranquility of the writer’s home and raises serious questions about the use of surveillance and technology by the government.

• Gender and Domination: The Problem of Patriarchal Power in the Narrative of Alice Walker, Alice Munro, Gloria Naylor and Toni Morrison (1990) by Audrey L. Ward

• Inspiriting Influences: Tradition, Revision, and Afro-American Women's Novels (1991) by Michael Awkward

• Gloria Naylor: Critical Perspectives Past and Present (1993), Henry Louis Gates and Kwame Anthony Appiah, eds.
  In the history of the African-American literary tradition, perhaps no author has been immersed in the formal history of that tradition than Gloria Naylor. As an undergraduate student of Afro-American literature at Brooklyn College and a graduate student of Afro-American studies at Yale, Naylor has analyzed the works of her male and female antecedents in a manner that was immpossible before the late seventies. And, while she is a citizen of the republic of literature in the broadest and most cosmopolitan sense, her work suggest formal linkage to that of Ann Petry, James Baldwin, and, more recently, Toni Morrison.--

• The Critical Response to Gloria Naylor (1997), Michelle C. Loris and Sharon Felton, eds.
  As the author of The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day, and Bailey's Cafe, Gloria Naylor is highly respected as one of the most important contemporary African American women writers. Her works are widely read and have been the subject of increasing amounts of scholarly attention. This volume provides comprehensive coverage of the critical response to her works. The book is divided into sections devoted to each of Naylor's novels. Within each section, seminal articles and book chapters comment on her writing. Special attention is given to African American and feminist perspectives on her canon. In addition, many of the essays discuss the relationship of Naylor's novels to the works of classical authors such as Chaucer, Dante, and Shakespeare, and to significant modern writers. A balance of new and previously published material provides a thoughtful overview of the reception of her works. A thorough introductory essay discusses Naylor's place in American literature and the themes she treats throughout her novels. A chronology summarizes the principal events in her life and career, and a substantial bibliography lists works for further reading. A special feature is an exclusive interview with Naylor, in which she discusses such topics as the role of the politics of gender in her writings, her treatment of women, the relationship between art and morality, her views on race relations, her thoughts on the future of literature and on her most recent projects, and the manner in which she works and writes.

• The Power of the Porch (1997) by Trudier Harris-Lopez
  The Storyteller's craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan

• Gloria Naylor's Early Novels (1999) by Margot Anne Kelley

• Understanding Gloria Naylor (1999) by Margaret Earley Whitt

• Gloria Naylor: A Critical Companion (2001) by Charles E. Wilson
  In each of her five novels, Gloria Naylor invites the reader to join her characters in their journeys to move beyond established boundaries and embrace an increasingly diverse society. With lucid analyses of each work, this Critical Companion helps readers comprehend how Naylor successfully links the trials of her African American characters to the struggles of any human being at variance with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Insights into Naylor's own struggles and successes are provided in a richly drawn biographical chapter, which incorporates fresh materials from a recent interview conducted for this book. Naylor's place within the larger framework of the African American narrative traditions is considered as well. Beginning with a full chapter on Naylor's debut success The Women of Brewster Place (1982), the literary components of each novel are examined: Linden Hills (1985) Mama Day (1988), Bailey's Cafe (1992), and The Men of Brewster Place (1998). In addition to a comprehensive plot synopsis, character portraits, and thematic discussions given for each, all works are carefully related to their historical contexts. By understanding the extent to which seminal events, such as the Great Migration and the ushering in of the Civil Rights Movement, serve as the background for Naylor's works, readers can better appreciate them. Throughout the text, particularly in the alternate critical readings provided, all terms and concepts are clearly explained for the student and the general reader. A select bibliography cites biographical sources, interviews, reviews, criticism, and related works of interest.

• Conversations With Gloria Naylor (2004) by Maxine Lavon Montgomery
  In 1982, one year after graduating from Brooklyn College, Gloria Naylor (b. 1950) made her debut on the literary scene with The Women of Brewster Place. The novel was critically acclaimed, filmed as a made-for-television movie, and turned into a television mini-series. Naylor's output now includes five novels, an edited collection of short stories, two theater projects, and a series of articles, essays, notes, and an unpublished work that combines fiction and nonfiction. Conversations with Gloria Naylor collects her interviews and shows her to be one of the most talented novelists to emerge in the past twenty years. The twenty-four that are included range from 1983, soon after the publication of her first novel, to 2000, following the publication of The Men of Brewster Place. Altogether they shed light on Naylor in all her wit, wisdom, and candor. She is the first among the current generation of African American women novelists to have made a study of her literary predecessors. Interviews with her are compelling in their revelation of the evolutionary journey of a self-professed introvert and dreamer who is as indebted to the English classics as she is to blues, jazz, or Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
  
  An indispensable resource for a study of Naylor's life and art, Conversations with Gloria Naylor offers rare insight into works that are in the vanguard of contemporary American literature.

• Remembering the Past in Contemporary African American Fiction (2005) by Keith Byerman
  Providing close readings of more than 20 novels by writers including Ernest Gaines, Toni Morrison, Charles Johnson, Gloria Naylor, and John Edgar Wideman, Byerman examines the trend among African American novelists of the late 20th century to write about black history rather than about their own present. Employing cultural criticism and trauma theory, Byerman frames these works as survivor narratives that rewrite the grand American narrative of individual achievement and the march of democracy.

• Worrying the Line (2005) by Cheryl A. Wall
  Wall applies the blues term "worrying the line" to describe the ways African American women writers reconstruct family genealogies in their fiction and nonfiction work through dreams, rituals, music, or images. Writers discussed include Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, and Gayl Jones.