GLORIA NAYLOR

'Gloria Naylor' (b. January 25, 1950 in New York City) is an African American novelist. Her novel ''The Women of Brewster Place'' was adapted into a 1989 film of the same name by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.
She was the first child to Roosevelt Naylor and Alberta McAlpin and in 1963 moved to Queens with her family. She joined the Jehovah's Witnesses in 1968. She believes she has been subject to mind control.^[1]

Contents

Early Life

School Life

Career

Bibliography

Notes

External links

Early Life

Gloria Naylor, an African-American writer who has become very successful in recent times, was born in 1950 to Roosevelt and Alberta in New York City, where she was raised and is still currently located. She was their first child. As Naylor grew up, her father was a transit worker and her mother was a telephone operator. When Naylor was young, her mother encouraged her to read and keep a journal. Even though her mother barely had any education, she loved to read and often worked overtime in the fields as a sharecropper to produce enough money to join a book club. After moving to Queens, Naylor followed in her mother's footsteps and became a Jehovah's Witness.

School Life

Naylor worked as a switchboard operator for a few years while taking classes at Medgar Evers College then transferring to attend Brooklyn College, Naylor received her Bachelor’s Degree in English. Once completing that, she joined Yale University in order to obtain her Master’s Degree in Afro – American Studies. During her career as a Professor, she taught Writing and Literature at several universities. She taught at George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University.

Career

“The Women of Brewster Place” was her first novel, which she wrote during her studies at Yale. This book was finished in 1983 and was widely known right after being published. She won the American Book Award for First Fiction in 1983 for her novel. Oprah Winfrey starred in a movie, which the book was turned in to only five years later. Other novels which she has written often contain personal life stories and illustrate ideas from the Bible. Another novel she wrote called “Mama Day” also won the National Book Award. Naylor has written four novels to date and is currently working on her fifth one called Saphhira Wade.

Bibliography

★ ''The Women of Brewster Place'' (1982), ISBN 0-670-77855-9

★ ''Linden Hills'' (1985), ISBN 0-89919-357-9

★ ''Mama Day'' (1988), ISBN 0-89919-716-7

★ ''Bailey's Café'' (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'' (1998), ISBN 0-7868-6421-4

★ ''1996'' (2005), ISBN 0-88378-263-4

Notes

1. Weinberger, S: "Mind Games The Washington Post, January 14, 2007, W22

External links

★ Literary Encyclopedia biography (in progress)

★ Voices from the Gaps biography

★ Biography

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