Gloria Naylor(1950-2016) grew up in New York City. She received her B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and her M.A. in Afro-American Studies from Yale University. Her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983. She is also the author of Linden Hills (available from Penguin), Mama Day, Bailey's Cafe, and The Men of Brewster Place.
[A]shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . .Miss Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly. -<i>The New York Times Book Review The most refreshing voice in the black idiom since readers first discovered Toni Morrison. -Claude Brown, author of <i>Manchild in the Promised Land Naylor creates a completely believable, and very frightening, world of degradation, violence and human - very human - courage and sturdiness. <i>Chicago Sun-Times</i> Vibrating with undisguised emotion, <i>The Women of Brewster Place</i>springs from the same roots that produces the blues. Like them, [Naylor's] book sings of sorrow proudly borne by black women in America. -<i>The Washington Post</i>