Homing a dead-end street: vulnerability, resistance and hope in Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place

Abstract

[eng] Gloria Naylor’s The Women of Brewster Place (1983) tells the story of a group of black women who have come to inhabit a block of apartments located in a dead-end street, sunk into stillness and hostility. As vulnerability and answerability struggle to be harbored within these women’s dwellings, the notions of “home” and “private space” become problematic, both the consequence as well as the result of inhabiting a community that cannot but fail to be ethical. However, amid Brewster’s precarity and loneliness, spaces and relations of resistance emerge, in the shape of bodily mobilizations, sheltering bonds and hopeful dreams. Therefore, this endof-degree paper aims to reexamine Naylor’s novel through ethical lenses while discussing both the why of these homes’ failure as well as the how of their resistance, may that occur through the resurgence of a new home or the withdrawing rejection to Brewster Place.

[cat] The Women of Brewster Place (1983), la primera novel·la de Gloria Naylor, explica la història d’un grup de dones negres que conviuen al bloc de pisos d’un carrer sense sortida, immòbil i hostil. A les cases on viuen no hi ha cabuda per a la vulnerabilitat i la capacitat de resposta i, per tant, les nocions de “llar” i “l’espai privat” esdevenen problemàtiques, tant en conseqüència com a resultat de ser part d’una comunitat que no aconsegueix ser ètica. Nogensmenys, entre la solitud i la precarietat de Brewster hi trobem espais i relacions de resistència, en forma de cossos mobilitzant-se, de connexions que esdevenen refugis i de somnis esperançadors. Així, aquest treball de fi de grau reexamina la novel·la de Naylor a través d’una òptica ètica, i investiga perquè fallen aquestes llars i/o com resisteixen, ja sigui a partir d’una nova llar o del refús absolut de Brewster Place.