Gloria Naylor
Gloria Naylor (born January 25, 1950) is an African American novelist and educator.
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[edit] Early life
Born in New York, she was the first child to Roosevelt Naylor and Alberta McAlpin. During Naylor's childhood, her father worked as a transit worker and her mother as a telephone operator. From a young age, Naylor's mother encouraged her to read and keep a journal. Even though her mother had little education, she loved to read and often worked overtime in the fields as a sharecropper to produce enough money to join a book club.
In 1963 she moved to Queens with her family. Five years later Naylor followed in her mother's footsteps and became a Jehovah's Witness, but she left seven years later as ”things weren't getting better, but worse.”[1]
[edit] Education
Naylor earned her bachelor’s degree in English at Brooklyn College, after which she obtained a master’s degree in Afro–American Studies from Yale University.
[edit] Career
Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place was first published in 1982. It was adapted into a 1989 film of the same name by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.
During her career as a professor, she taught writing and literature at several universities. She has taught at George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University.
[edit] Works
- The Women of Brewster Place (1982), ISBN 0-7868-6421-4; winner of the National Book Award in 1983
- Linden Hills (1985), ISBN 0-14008-829-6
- 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 (1999), ISBN 0-78688-405-3
- 1996 (2005), ISBN 0-88378-263-4
[edit] See also
- Prahlad, Sw. Anand. 1998. "All chickens come home to roost: The function of proverbs in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day." Proverbium 15: 265-282.
Drieling Claudia, 2011. Constructs of "Home" in Gloria Naylor's Quartet. ISBN 978-3-8260-4492-2, 325 pp., by Königshausen & Neumann, Germany, Würzburg.
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- Biography at aalbc.com
- Gloria Naylor at aaregistry.com
- Gloria Naylor at Watchtower Information Service
- Author profile at her publisher Random House
- Article "Award Winning Author Gloria Naylor Donates Archives to SHU" at sacredheart.edu
