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Conversations with Gloria Naylor
BIOGRAPHY ] LITERARY criticism ] AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES
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 miniseries. 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novels, an edited collection of short stories, two theater projects, and a series of articles, essays, notes, and an unpublished work that combines fiction and nonfiction.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 fourteen interviews 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.
Maxine Lavon Montgomery, is an associate professor of English at Florida State University and the author of The Apocalypse in African-American Fiction. Her work has been published in African-American Review, College Language Association Journal, the Literary Griot, and Obsidian II: African-American Literature in Review.
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 miniseries. 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novels, an edited collection of short stories, two theater projects, and a series of articles, essays, notes, and an unpublished work that combines fiction and nonfiction.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 fourteen interviews 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.
Maxine Lavon Montgomery, is an associate professor of English at Florida State University and the author of The Apocalypse in African-American Fiction. Her work has been published in African-American Review, College Language Association Journal, the Literary Griot, and Obsidian II: African-American Literature in Review.
214 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
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March 28, 2020
Gloria Naylor has quickly emerged as one of my new favorite writers. To my dismay it is very hard to find out anything of substance on her life, her upbringing and her outlook on writing, since she purposefully made herself scarce. So her Wikipedia page basically doesn't tell you anything of interest and you have to look far and wide to find an interesting interview of hers online. Luckily enough, in 2004 Maxine Lavon Montgomery edited a selection of interviews and conversations with Gloria Naylor.
This book provided great insight into her mind and her approach to writing, however, it wasn't as detailed or varied as I would have liked it to be. It spans interviews/conversations beginning from 1983, when her debut novel The Women of Brewster Place was published, up to 2000. However, a lot of the interviews dealt with similar subjects and therefore Gloria repeated herself quite often. Additionally, I was kind of surprised that she didn't grew on me as a person. When it comes to my favorite authors, I am quick to take them as people into my heart as well (ya'll know how I get when I talk about Oscar Wilde) but Gloria Naylor, weirdly, remains quite distanced from myself. I found that particularly odd since in her conversation with Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Giovanni had me wrapped around her finger and convinced that I need to read all of her work now, whereas Gloria remained quite the passive and (it pains me to say this) boring figure.
Nonetheless, I am extremely happy that I read this selection of interviews since it proved quite educational. She was born on January 25, 1950 in New York City. At age 18, she became a Jehovah's Witness minister and spent seven years after high school preaching. Gloria says that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 proved to be such a disruptive and disheartening event for her that she chose against pursuing higher education. However, at age 25, she left the Jehovah's Witnesses and started studying English at Brooklyn College. In 1980, she got married. A marriage that only lasted 10 days but is never elaborated upon in any of the interviews. I would have loved to know what compelled Gloria to tie (and untie) the knot so quickly.
During university she dreamed of a quartet of novels – all of which she would manage to write and publish in her lifetime: The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Café. I found it incredibly interesting to learn that Gloria wanted to write another novel (the working title was Sapphira Wade) in the 90s, surrounding the foremother of Mama Day, but never finished the project due to the harassment she underwent in 1996.
In a lot of the interviews, Gloria bemoans the fact that the Western canon (and thus our school curriculums) are so dominated by white male voices. She says that up until participating in a women's writing course in university, she never encountered a work written by a Black woman. She talks about the courage and resilience it took to break with those boundaries and stereotypes. Her conversations with Toni Morrison and Nikki Giovanni are particularly fruitful on that subject. Like many writers, she claims that she "has to write", that "writing pulled her out of a depression" and that she couldn't live without writing.
In general, she seems to have had quite the spiritual approach to writing and her characters. Her novels came as dreams to her, she wrote letters to her characters introducing herself and her plans for them, she says that her characters truly come alive for her and make the decisions, therefore when Willa (a character from her second novel Linden Hills) emerged from the attic in which she was locked by her husband, Gloria had to grant her the wish to stay a housewife because that's what Willa wanted to be. Gloria wanted her to scream in her husband's face and leave his ass (quite frankly, I wanted that too) but she says that this is not what was supposed to happen since Willa herself had other plans.
Another thing I found incredibly interesting is the fact that she claimed that Shakespeare's The Tempest never influenced Mama Day, or if it did, then just subconsciously. She only started seeing the parallels after the critics pointed them out. She says that she modelled the love story of George and Cocoa much more after the likeness of Romeo and Juliet. Additionally, I found her musings on Linden Hills and how she shaped it after Dante's Inferno extremely insightful. I haven't read the latter work but Gloria claims that everything (right up to the rhyme pattern) was transliteration with Dante. At the end of the novel, Willa, Luther and the baby represent the image of Satan being a three-headed creature frozen in this lake crying.
Despite the fact that Naylor claims she's not a political writer, the most interesting portions of the book were her musings about racism and why it doesn't really exist in her work. Despite being an American writer and writing about places somewhere in the United States, Gloria Naylor manages to create spaces for Black people only. I don't know how I didn't realise this before but there are no white people in her work. She says that's "simply because the white world isn't important to me." Gloria Naylor really opened my eyes, since until now I had thought that that in itself would be impossible, that you sort of need that "white background" (as Zora Neale Hurston put it) to display Blackness.
In regards to The Men of Brewster Place, I also finally have an answer for why that book was so bad compared to her previous work. Gloria says that the writing of the book was prompted by the death of her father (the book is dedicated to him as well), therefore, I can totally see why she went so soft on all of the men in the novel and basically excused their questionable behaviour of the past. I think that book was highly coloured by her own grief and mourning. And on top of that, she says that she completed writing the book within four months ... yeah, that shows as well.
I find it incredibly sad that Gloria Naylor's life seemed to have taken a serious hit in the late 90s, she claims that she was controlled and harassed by the government and believes that she was a targeted individual. Now, I don't subscribe to those ridiculous conspiracy theories at all and it hurts me that those beliefs tampered with her writing as well. She didn't finish Sapphira Wade due to her breakdown and after that The Men of Brewster Place just lacked quality. It's especially sad since she says throughout the years that she wants to be remembered, that she wants to have a career like James Baldwin, that being a witness and writing are her vocation. Well, Gloria, I‘m going to do my best to shout my love for you from the rooftops. You shall not be forgotten!
This book provided great insight into her mind and her approach to writing, however, it wasn't as detailed or varied as I would have liked it to be. It spans interviews/conversations beginning from 1983, when her debut novel The Women of Brewster Place was published, up to 2000. However, a lot of the interviews dealt with similar subjects and therefore Gloria repeated herself quite often. Additionally, I was kind of surprised that she didn't grew on me as a person. When it comes to my favorite authors, I am quick to take them as people into my heart as well (ya'll know how I get when I talk about Oscar Wilde) but Gloria Naylor, weirdly, remains quite distanced from myself. I found that particularly odd since in her conversation with Nikki Giovanni, Nikki Giovanni had me wrapped around her finger and convinced that I need to read all of her work now, whereas Gloria remained quite the passive and (it pains me to say this) boring figure.
Nonetheless, I am extremely happy that I read this selection of interviews since it proved quite educational. She was born on January 25, 1950 in New York City. At age 18, she became a Jehovah's Witness minister and spent seven years after high school preaching. Gloria says that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 proved to be such a disruptive and disheartening event for her that she chose against pursuing higher education. However, at age 25, she left the Jehovah's Witnesses and started studying English at Brooklyn College. In 1980, she got married. A marriage that only lasted 10 days but is never elaborated upon in any of the interviews. I would have loved to know what compelled Gloria to tie (and untie) the knot so quickly.
During university she dreamed of a quartet of novels – all of which she would manage to write and publish in her lifetime: The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Café. I found it incredibly interesting to learn that Gloria wanted to write another novel (the working title was Sapphira Wade) in the 90s, surrounding the foremother of Mama Day, but never finished the project due to the harassment she underwent in 1996.
In a lot of the interviews, Gloria bemoans the fact that the Western canon (and thus our school curriculums) are so dominated by white male voices. She says that up until participating in a women's writing course in university, she never encountered a work written by a Black woman. She talks about the courage and resilience it took to break with those boundaries and stereotypes. Her conversations with Toni Morrison and Nikki Giovanni are particularly fruitful on that subject. Like many writers, she claims that she "has to write", that "writing pulled her out of a depression" and that she couldn't live without writing.
In general, she seems to have had quite the spiritual approach to writing and her characters. Her novels came as dreams to her, she wrote letters to her characters introducing herself and her plans for them, she says that her characters truly come alive for her and make the decisions, therefore when Willa (a character from her second novel Linden Hills) emerged from the attic in which she was locked by her husband, Gloria had to grant her the wish to stay a housewife because that's what Willa wanted to be. Gloria wanted her to scream in her husband's face and leave his ass (quite frankly, I wanted that too) but she says that this is not what was supposed to happen since Willa herself had other plans.
Another thing I found incredibly interesting is the fact that she claimed that Shakespeare's The Tempest never influenced Mama Day, or if it did, then just subconsciously. She only started seeing the parallels after the critics pointed them out. She says that she modelled the love story of George and Cocoa much more after the likeness of Romeo and Juliet. Additionally, I found her musings on Linden Hills and how she shaped it after Dante's Inferno extremely insightful. I haven't read the latter work but Gloria claims that everything (right up to the rhyme pattern) was transliteration with Dante. At the end of the novel, Willa, Luther and the baby represent the image of Satan being a three-headed creature frozen in this lake crying.
Despite the fact that Naylor claims she's not a political writer, the most interesting portions of the book were her musings about racism and why it doesn't really exist in her work. Despite being an American writer and writing about places somewhere in the United States, Gloria Naylor manages to create spaces for Black people only. I don't know how I didn't realise this before but there are no white people in her work. She says that's "simply because the white world isn't important to me." Gloria Naylor really opened my eyes, since until now I had thought that that in itself would be impossible, that you sort of need that "white background" (as Zora Neale Hurston put it) to display Blackness.
In regards to The Men of Brewster Place, I also finally have an answer for why that book was so bad compared to her previous work. Gloria says that the writing of the book was prompted by the death of her father (the book is dedicated to him as well), therefore, I can totally see why she went so soft on all of the men in the novel and basically excused their questionable behaviour of the past. I think that book was highly coloured by her own grief and mourning. And on top of that, she says that she completed writing the book within four months ... yeah, that shows as well.
I find it incredibly sad that Gloria Naylor's life seemed to have taken a serious hit in the late 90s, she claims that she was controlled and harassed by the government and believes that she was a targeted individual. Now, I don't subscribe to those ridiculous conspiracy theories at all and it hurts me that those beliefs tampered with her writing as well. She didn't finish Sapphira Wade due to her breakdown and after that The Men of Brewster Place just lacked quality. It's especially sad since she says throughout the years that she wants to be remembered, that she wants to have a career like James Baldwin, that being a witness and writing are her vocation. Well, Gloria, I‘m going to do my best to shout my love for you from the rooftops. You shall not be forgotten!
February 13, 2017
Another book I picked up when I was working on my MA thesis on African-American women's writing (Gloria Naylor was one of the authors I focused my study on).
This book is a fantastic reading companion for anyone interested in Naylor's writing. It provides a great insight into the author's life; she made her literary debut with the incredible The Women of Brewster Place in 1982, one year after graduating from Brooklyn College. This book provides a discussion of this book and the four that followed (up until the time of publishing), as well as 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 fourteen interviews, shedding light on one of the most talented novelists to emerge in the latter part of the 20th century, not just in African-American writing or women's writing, but in writing as a whole. Naylor was certainly one of the most fascinating writers among the (then) current generation of African-American women novelists (sadly, she died last year). The interviews included in this book are compelling, giving us a peak into Naylor's life as a self-confessed introvert and Jazz lover, who claims she was indebted to Toni Morrison for her novel The Bluest Eye.
This is an indispensable resource for a study of Naylor's life and art (for her literary work truly is just that).
This book is a fantastic reading companion for anyone interested in Naylor's writing. It provides a great insight into the author's life; she made her literary debut with the incredible The Women of Brewster Place in 1982, one year after graduating from Brooklyn College. This book provides a discussion of this book and the four that followed (up until the time of publishing), as well as 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 fourteen interviews, shedding light on one of the most talented novelists to emerge in the latter part of the 20th century, not just in African-American writing or women's writing, but in writing as a whole. Naylor was certainly one of the most fascinating writers among the (then) current generation of African-American women novelists (sadly, she died last year). The interviews included in this book are compelling, giving us a peak into Naylor's life as a self-confessed introvert and Jazz lover, who claims she was indebted to Toni Morrison for her novel The Bluest Eye.
This is an indispensable resource for a study of Naylor's life and art (for her literary work truly is just that).
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