Gloria Naylor facts for kids

Gloria Naylor (born January 25, 1950 – died September 28, 2016) was an American novelist. She was well-known for her books, especially The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), and Mama Day (1988).

Early Life and Education

Gloria Naylor was born in New York City on January 25, 1950. She was the oldest child of Roosevelt Naylor and Alberta McAlpin. Her parents had moved to Harlem from Robinsonville, Mississippi. They left the segregated Southern United States to find new chances in New York City. Her father worked for the transit system, and her mother was a telephone operator.

Even though her mother did not have much formal education, she loved to read. She encouraged Gloria to read and to write in a journal. Before she was a teenager, Gloria started writing a lot. She filled many notebooks with her thoughts, poems, and short stories.

In 1963, Naylor's family moved to Queens. Her mother became a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Gloria was a very good student who read all the time. In high school, she was placed in advanced classes. She spent a lot of time reading books by British novelists from the 1800s.

Her plans for college were put on hold after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during her senior year. She decided to become a missionary for the Jehovah's Witnesses instead. She worked in New York, North Carolina, and Florida. After seven years, she left the missionary work.

From 1975 to 1981, Naylor attended Medgar Evers College and then Brooklyn College. She worked as a telephone operator during this time. She first studied nursing but then switched to English. She earned her bachelor's degree in 1981.

During this time, she read The Bluest Eye, a novel by Toni Morrison. This book was a very important moment for Naylor. She then started reading many books by other Black women novelists. These included Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. She had not known about these authors before. In 1983, she earned a master's degree in African-American studies from Yale University. Her master's paper later became her second published novel, Linden Hills.

Naylor was also an honorary member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Writing Career

Gloria Naylor's first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, was published in 1982. It won the National Book Award in 1983 for best first novel. This is a very important award for writers in the U.S. In 1989, the book was made into a TV miniseries. Oprah Winfrey's company, Harpo Productions, produced it.

Naylor's stories are also found in many collections of writings. Some of these include Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction (1990) and Daughters of Africa (1992).

During her career, Naylor also taught writing and literature. She taught at several universities. These included George Washington University, New York University, and Cornell University.

In 1989, Naylor was a special writer-in-residence at Newcomb College at Tulane University. She gave readings of her works there. She was also interviewed publicly about her writing.

Her last novel, 1996, came out in 2005. In this book, which was a fictionalized memoir, she wrote about a character who felt watched and bothered by government agencies.

In 2009, Naylor gave her collection of writings and papers to Sacred Heart University. This collection is currently at Lehigh University to be made into digital files.

Gloria Naylor passed away from a heart attack on September 28, 2016. She was visiting St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands at the time. She was 66 years old.

In 2019, an unfinished story called Sapphira Wade was published. It came from Naylor's old papers. It was put online and in the African American Review magazine.

Literary Influence

While studying at Brooklyn College, Naylor read many books by African-American women authors. She was especially inspired by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.

These authors helped Naylor start writing her own stories. Her stories focused on the lives of African-American women. This led to her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place, in 1982.

Major Works

• The Women of Brewster Place (1982), ISBN: 0-7868-6421-4
• Linden Hills (1985), ISBN: 0-14-008829-6
• The Meanings of a Word (1986)
• Mama Day (1988), ISBN: 0-89919-716-7
• Bailey's Cafe (1992), ISBN: 0-15-110450-6
• Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present (1995), ISBN: 0-316-59926-3 (editor)
• The Men of Brewster Place (1999), ISBN: 0-7868-8405-3
• 1996 (2005), ISBN: 0-88378-263-4

About The Women of Brewster Place

Gloria Naylor received a lot of praise for her first novel, The Women of Brewster Place. In this book, and her later novels, Naylor showed many social issues in a strong and clear way. These issues included poverty, racism, and unfair treatment of women. She also wrote about how African Americans were sometimes treated differently.

A writer named Vashti Crutcher Lewis praised Naylor's first novel. She said it was brilliant because of its rich writing and beautiful descriptions of African Americans. She also noted how it showed what it meant to be a Black woman in America.

In The Women of Brewster Place and her other books, Naylor focused on themes like love, marriage, and being respected. She also wrote about having enough money to live. Lewis explained that Naylor's books showed that poverty often leads to violence. They also showed that true friendship does not depend on if you are a boy or a girl. And they showed that women in Black neighborhoods in America carried their problems with grace and strength.

Awards and Recognition

• National Book Award for first novel, 1983
• National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 1985
• Candace Award, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, 1986
• Guggenheim Fellowship, 1988
• Lillian Smith Award, 1989

See also

In Spanish: Gloria Naylor para niños