Research Paper on:
Male Characters in The Men of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

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as a "force that heals" (Puhr, 1994, p. 518). The public first encountered Naylor through her tales seven women who lived at Brewster Place. In the works that followed Brewster  Place, Naylor continued to focus on the lives of African American women. In her novel The Men of Brewster Place, she returns to her original starting point and shifts  her emphasis to spotlight the lives of the men who inhabit her fictional neighborhood (Bauer, 1998). Although some critics, such as Montgomery (2001) have indicated that this novel "lacks the  lyricism and character depth" of earlier Naylor works, it is still considered to be a significant contribution to increasing social understanding of the contemporary black male situation (p. 159).  As this critics rather grudging estimation of The Men of Brewster Place acknowledges, this book does, indeed, increase the readers understanding of how a black man can be an ex-con,  a drunk, or half a dozen other things that are all negative, and still also be a genuine human being, with a heart. The following discussion of how Naylor characterizes  the men in her books will demonstrate how this sensitive, empathetic author delves right to the heart of a person, showing that black men are not all that different from  black women -- they strive, sometimes they fail, but they are who they are. Ben As narrator for this novel, Naylor brings back the most detailed and most memorable  male characterization from The Women of Brewster Place, Ben, the custodian/janitor who acts as an omniscient voice, seeing everything that transpires within the confines of Brewster Place. As Naylor has  Ben inform the reader on some details from this childhood, the fact dehumanizing and symbolically castrating aspects of how black men had to live during the greater part of the