Paper proposal concepts and scope

¶ … Othermothers" in the Women of Brewster Place

In this research proposal, the author this research proposal will compare the strength of relationships between the Women of Brewster Place as compared to the relationship that they each experience with men. The author will then go through each personal story highlighting the dysfunctional relationship that each woman has with a man, including issues such as using the women as sexual objects, pregnancy, shame, fear, and the flight of the men from the relationship. Then it will be centrally connected to the book as a whole. Each of the women's lives are explored in the book in seven short vignettes. These short vignettes chronicle the ups and downs that many African-American women of face and the author will consider the women's relationships as opposed to sex as they are laid out in each vignette. If not directly wounded by the opposite sex, the ladies have women in their lives which need this healing and it comes about via the sisterhood and motherhood that is created. The author's style backs up this imagery (Puscas 402).

What this author proposes to research further is the subject of the creation of community and unity by women when there is not any there in reality. What is truly the adaptive genius of African-American women (and women in general as well is the ability to take the dysfunctional relationships that they have and to construct something new out of them whole cloth. In the book Black Feminist Thought, Collins takes the reader back to black American women's West African roots where she stresses the importance of "othermothers" and strong maternal leaders (Collins 215). With all of the dysfunctional men in their lives, black women desperately need each other. This female leadership is exactly what Khaleggi points out in his journal article on the book:

Gloria Naylor, in her novels the Women of Brewster Place… notices the special bond that exists between women characters, including women of different generations…a community of women emerges-sustaining, enabling, and enriching the lives of each other. In the Women of Brewster Place, Naylor indicates the women's sense of isolation, their mistreatment by men and their search for identity through shared experiences. (Khaleghi 131).

Mattie Michael is from a small town in Tennessee and ends up bringing her small town mores to Brewster Place. Her relationship with Ciel (Luciela Louise) who is not her child is motherly and tries to comfort her after Ciel looses her baby (Naylor 102). While Ciel turns Mattie away, this does not end the relationship. Rather, she sees the problem as a chance to bond with another woman and she needs all the help she can get. Being a mother is never easy and the helpful Mattie makes things that much easier for Ciel..

This relationship extends to Etta Mae. It is understandable that Mattie Michael has a relationship with Etta Mae. They are from the same small Tennessee town and this small town caring comforts Etta Mae when the Reverend Woods abandons her (ibid., 174).

Kiswana/Melanie Browne is the exception because she gives up a comfortable middle class existence to move into the Brewster Place neighborhood. While estranged from her family for leaving a privileged background for a life with the poor underclass of blacks, she is healed in the relationship with her mother by identifying with her mother as a black woman. Kiswana is proud of being black and pillories her mother as "a white man's nigger who's ashamed of being black" (ibid., p. 85). Kiswana therefore helps Cora Lee to heal from her "shadow men" who have made a mother without caring about their offspring (ibid., 113).

Lorraine and Theresa are a lesbian couple which challenges the women's notions of love and friendship. Their relationship is truly complex and outside of the comprehension of men. Baker observes that the women move to Brewster place to be themselves and that they do not fully accomplish this and are not successful even there (Williams). It is the opinion of this author that without this love for each other, they would not have survived.

The implications of this books and others like it by Naylor have been very profound in the study of black feminism. Nnaemeka makes the argument that, "The texts discuss women's solidarity as an issue of survival; solidarity among women offers a safety net and a breath of fresh air in a suffocating, constraining environment" (Nnaemeka 19). Calling the book a "safety net" is an understatement when it comes to the creation of leadership and solidarity amongst black women. Indeed, it is the support structure of the black family and indeed the black world on so many levels.