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

Literary Allusion in Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Day Gloria Naylor has endeavored to overcome the obstacles that accompany being an African-American woman writer. In her first tierce 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 makes it her goal to incorporate the lives of African-Americans into an art take a leak 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 masters? They were and are. But inside there was lock up 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 recitation of allusions to the themes and structures of Shakespeare 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 Dream 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 existence 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. According to Peter Erickson, the play ...inspires in Cora Lee... ...ills. stark naked York Penguin, 1985. _____. Mama Day. New York Vintage 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, James Robert. The Ornamentation of Old Ideas Naylors First Three Novels. Hollins Critic 27 (1990). Rpt. in Gloria Naylor vital Perspectives other(prenominal) 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 Paul Werstine. New York Washington Square, 1994. Ward, Catherine C. Linden Hills A Modern Inferno. Contemporary Literature 28 (1987), 67-81. Rpt. in Gloria Naylor Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York Amistad, 1993.