The Women of Brewster Place (Author Biography)

Author Biography

The oldest of three girls, Naylor was born in New York City on January 25, 1950. Her family moved several times during her childhood, living at different times in a housing project in upper Bronx, a Harlem apartment building, and in Queens. When Naylor graduated from high school in 1968, she became a minister for the Jehovah's Witnesses. To fund her work as a minister, she lived with her parents and worked as a switchboard operator. In 1974, Naylor moved first to North Carolina and then to Florida to practice full-time ministry, but had to work in fast-food restaurants and as a telephone operator to help support her religious work. She left the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1975 and moved back home; shortly after returning to New York, she suffered a nervous breakdown.

Later that year, Naylor began to study nursing at Medgar Evers College, then transferred to Brooklyn College of CUNY to study English. Two years later, she read Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye; it was the first time she had read a novel written by a black woman. Dismayed to learn that there were very few books written by black women about black women, she began to believe that her education in northern integrated schools had deprived her of learning about the long tradition of black history and literature. She resolved to write about her heritage — the black woman in America. She completed The Women of Brewster Place in 1981, the same year she received her Bachelor of Arts degree.

Naylor earned a Master of Arts degree in Afro-American Studies from Yale University in 1983. That same year, she received the American Book Award for Best First Novel, served as writer-in-residence at Cummington Community of the Arts, and was a visiting lecturer at George Washington University. Since 1983, Naylor has continued to write, lecture, and receive awards for her writing.

Naylor attributes the success of The Women of Brewster Place as well as her other novels to her ability to infuse her work with personal experience. While Naylor's characters are fictional, they immortalize the spirit of her own grandmother, great aunt, and mother.