Reading Discourses of Violence in Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place

The paper examines the narratives of violence in Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place. The black women characters are presented as fragile bodies and easily available commodities not only for the white men but also for the men of their color. The rape episodes in the novel suggest the vulnerability of the women whose bodies are considered as holes "or containers: fragile, static, open, waiting to be filled with everything from semen to language" (Hite 133). Violence is a dark reality for the black women. It comes to them in the form of rape, sexual abuse by partner, domestic violence, verbal abuse, slavery and racism. While investigating the nature of violence in The Women of Brewster Place, the attempt is also to probe into the lives of Black women characters to showcase their material and psychic realities - pain, trauma and their resilience to fight back.