Literary Allusion in Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Da

Literary Allusion in Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and mummy Day Gloria Naylor has endeavored to overcome the obstacles that accompany being an African-American woman writer. In her graduation exercise three novels, The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Day, Naylor succeeds not only in blurring the boundary between ethnic writing and classical writing, but she leases it her determination to incorporate the lives of African-Americans into an art form with universal appeal. Gloria Naylor explains this struggle by stating, The writers I had been taught to love were either male or white. And who was I to argue that Ellison, Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, Baldwin and Faulkner werent know? They were and are. But inside there was still the faintest whisper Was there no one telling my story? (qtd. in Erickson 232). Naylor, in her quest to make the western cannon more universal, readapts the classics. By the use of allusions to the themes and structures of Shakes peare and Dante in her first three novels, Naylor revises the classics to encompass African-Americans. In The Women of Brewster Place, Naylors allusions to Shakespeares comedy A midsummer Nights intake reinterpret the bard to depict the plight of African-American women. Naylor incorporates themes of A Midsummer Nights Dream into the life of Cora Lee, a resident of the Brewster Place housing project. Cora Lee, whose public is dominated by the responsibilities and demands of raising her children, escapes into the vacuousness of television soap operas. However, Cora Lees lifestyle is temporarily modified when she is invited to attend a production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. tally to Peter Erickson, the play ...inspires in Cora Lee... ...ills. New York Penguin, 1985. _____. Mama Day. New York time of origin Contemporaries, 1993. _____. The Women of Brewster Place. New York Penguin, 1980. Perry, Donna. Backtalk Women Writers Speak Out. New Brunswick, New Jersey Rutgers, 1993. Saunders, crowd Robert. The Ornamentation of Old Ideas Naylors First Three Novels. Hollins Critic 27 (1990). Rpt. in Gloria Naylor Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York Amistad, 1993. Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Nights Dream. Ed. Roma Gill. Oxford Oxford, 1981. _____. The Tempest. Eds. Barbara A. Mowat and capital of Minnesota Werstine. New York Washington Square, 1994. Ward, Catherine C. Linden Hills A Modern Inferno. Contemporary lit 28 (1987), 67-81. Rpt. in Gloria Naylor Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York Amistad, 1993.