Gloria Naylor esteemed herself as a novelist during the 1980s within a time period recognized as a renaissance for U.S. black women writers who had begun publishing in unprecedented numbers. She received mainstream recognition with the 1982 debut novel
The Women of Brewster Place. It not only received the National Book Award, but critics would go on to regard it as her most popularly received. It also was the only one of her novels to cross over into film. Naylor’s examination of intra-racial conflict and identity politics related to sexual orientation, class, and gender through this piece conveys a shared sensibility had among black women writers who, in the words of critic Nellie McKay, were driven by “impulse toward an honest, complicated, and varied expression of the meaning of…
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Citation: Bolton, Philathia. "Mama Day". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 July 2014 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35204, accessed 22 November 2024.]
