Rating: 
Summary: GREAT BOOK!!!
Review: I saw this movie first, but I still wanted to read the book because supposedly the book is always better. In this case, the book was just like the movie but it was still good nevertheless. This book takes you on a journey of seven different women, each with her own set of problems. The one things that brings each of these women together is Brewster Place, something one would call "the projects". Brewster place helps all of these women come together in the end by taking control of Brewster Place and the violence that went along with it. VERY GOOD BOOK!!!
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed The Women Of Brewster Place and I liked the stories told by the different characters in the book. Each woman had her own chapter (one chapter featured two women) and it was like reading seven short stories but characters from one story would interact with characters from another story so it gave the book a "novel" feel as well. This book captured me from the beginning until the end but I was left confused a time or two. I don't quite know if I understood what went on with Mattie at the end of her chapter nor do I know if I understood what happened to Lorraine at the end of her chapter. Perhaps I'll try to rent the movie if I can find it at the local video store or maybe I'll discuss the book with some of my friends who read the book. In any case, buy this book and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: An elegant bard of seven tragedies
Review: I thought this book was terrific. I bought in on the recommendation of a friend who compared Neylor to Toni Morrison. She also writes in the vernacular, but hers is more accessible than Morrison's. The stories are tragic and depressing, with glints of humor and hope. I felt emotionally attached to most of the characters, and Neylot does a good job of weaving the biographies in together. I will say that the stories were just that; the sheer melodrama of these women's lives made the stories more fictional than believable. With that said, I couldn't put the book down. I look forward to reading Mama Day and the Men of Brewster Place in the very near future.
Rating: 
Summary: The Woman Of Brewster Place
Review: I thought this was a good book; I liked the characters and how they all seemed to come together to help each other. They all seem to have special bonds to one another. Mattie has been there the longest so she knows just about everyone. She left her home in the south when she was 17 and had a baby. Lucielia's boyfriend is leaving her and then something terrible happens. Mattie was there to help pick up the pieces. Etta Mae is the wild one on Brewster, always partying and looking for a man. Mattie, also a part of Etta Mae's life and proves to be a true friend. Kiswana, her mother thinks she is too good for Brewster, always has her hands in something and goes out of her way to show Cora that she really cares. Cora loves babies, but only if they could stay babies. Lorraine and Theresa are "different" they came to Brewster Place to get away from the kind of people who make stereotypes, but even in Brewster they were considered out casts. The Woman of Brewster Place made me think, I would recommend it to anyone looking for an interesting book.
Rating: 
Summary: how to really get depressed
Review: If you really want to get seriously depressed, read this book. I kept reading to see what other reviewers had found so rewarding about this book. With every chapter I knew practically from the first paragraph what most likely would happen and...usually I was right. I know I can't really relate to these women and..OK..I know places like Brewster Place are painfully real all over the world....but to try to present ALL the world's problems in one book is really too much. I guess I kept reading to the end in the faint hope that there might be one happy moment...wrong.
Rating:
Summary: Shocking reality of Cultural Diversity
Review: In this beautifully written, horrifically detailed book, one enters into the life of women who make do with what the hand they've been dealt. It makes you laugh, cry and feel for these characters. Naylor writes in a way that draws you into the character, wanting to reach out and give them a hand. I took a short stories class and read of Luciela Louise Turner's life and was hooked and ordered it online. I will never think of these women, or even the real life women who suffer these poverties everyday.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't like it
Review: Just didn't like it, was boring, didn't know if the it was a dream or a story, didn't like the personalities of the people.
Rating:
Summary: Great Read, Great Movie, Great Writer
Review: Naylor, like Walker is the best of all the rest. I could have sworn that I knew each and every one of these women. I can't even describe the emotion I felt when I read this book. Naylor captures the basic theme that all women need to adhere to, not just Black women, that is that we as females need to try to start saving ourselves from destruction and stop trying to save everybodyelse because we feel it is somehow our duty to do so. We need to cast down our buckets where we are and start taking control of our lives, and our destinys. I loved this book and I can't wait to read it again, it was just that good.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty good BUT
Review: On the whole I liked it, but the characters' lives were pretty depressing. I also didn't quite get how Mattie came to be such a Wise Old Elder, when her presence in Brewster Place was due to horrendous bad judgment on her part. There's also a really horrible scene involving one of the other characters at the end -- it made sense dramatically but it totally grossed me out. And I didn't think it was resolved properly, unless you consider a dream sequence a resolution. It didn't help that I liked that character a lot!
Rating:
Summary: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T, oh my Lord, what it means to me"
Review: Seven African-American women living in a small corner of an unnamed Northern city, in decrepit, badly heated buildings that have been abandoned by successive waves of workers and immigrants. They have arrived there in different ways, their motives for settling there range from idealism through escape to inertia. Some women have come up from the South to the "Promised Land" of the North, only to find disillusionment and loss. Others have moved in from better parts of the city to escape prejudice against lesbians or in protest against the relentless onslaught of middle class values (oh, horror !) among the upwardly mobile black bourgeoisie. Gloria Naylor tells each woman's story separately, but slowly links develop between and among the various characters. In general, they are stories of the will to survive--- the overcoming, not so much of white prejudice, but of predatory or misanthropic behavior from their own relatives and neighbors. Economic hardship traces its lines on the lives of the women as well. Each one handles lack of money in a different way. To paraphrase an old song, "disappointment was their closest friend". Violence smoulders under the surface, appearing menacingly like shark's fins above the lagoon's surface, only to explode at the book's denouement at the same time that a coming-together occurs. Hope and despair forever wrapped around each other. Naylor's writing is a little patchy, sometimes dropping towards the banal, but occasionally rising to absolute brilliance. The stories do not lag, lead you into the next one, and leave you wishing there were more. The one surprising common thread is the utter hopelessness and inadequacy of all the men. Perhaps this attitude springs from the author's personal experience, but it borders on stereotype. While the female characters are varied, their motives complex, and the way they meet the challenges of life intriguing, the men (except for one despairing alcoholic) are presented as universally weak scoundrels and losers. Since the book is about women, I read it without many misgivings, but it does leave you wondering. THE WOMEN OF BREWSTER PLACE deserves a solid spot in the annals of American literature for its language and for its portrayal of African-American womens' lives for a worldwide audience. Brewster Place is a metaphor for America, something like Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row". Though things have changed, even so, too many daughters of Brewster Place still "wake up with their dreams misted on the edge of a yawn."
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