A remarkable first novel from a gifted black writer, ["The Women of Brewster Place"] marks Gloria Naylor's talent as one to watch. In an unidentified northern city Brewster Place has become a slum for blacks. Naylor tells her story through the eventually interlocking lives of seven women, old and young, who have come there in refuge, despair or defiance…. [Their] lives reflect in depth the experiences of many black women alive in this country today, from the old woman tossed out as a teenager by her self-righteous Southern father when she bore an illegitimate child, to the young woman from a rich family fascinated by her African roots and trying to persuade her sisters to fight a slum landlord. It is when two lesbians move in that all the fears and prejudices of Brewster Place rise to a terrible climax, one that leaves the reader shattered.

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