The Fiction of Gloria Naylor: Houses and Spaces of Resistance

Contents

Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1 Navigating a Blues Landscape: The Women of Brewster Place Inner-City Blues 1 Of Housewives and Revolutionaries 12 Refiguring Borders, Dismantling Walls 16 2 Burning Down the Master’s House: Linden Hills A House Is Not a Home 21 Good Housekeeping and Other Misnomers 28 Stairways, Entrances, and Transitional Sites 32 3 Finding Peace in the Middle: Mama Day Everybody’s Mama, Nobody’s Slave: Reinscribing the Legend of Sapphira Wade 37 Crossing Over to “The Other Place” 43 Being around Living Mirrors 49 4 Mapping the New World Order: Bailey’s Café In Search of Eve’s Garden 53 Rewriting the Virgin-Whore Dichotomy: A Tale of Two Marys 67 Writing the Black Man’s Blues 69 Conclusion 75 Appendix. Opening Up the Place Called Home: A Conversation with Gloria Naylor 81 Notes 101 Bibliography 107 Index 113 ...