#women if brewster place

[farfromhome999]

Black Motherhood in A Thousand and One (2023) & The Women of Brewster Place (1989)

[SPOILERS!!! TW: SA, Familial Abandonment]

Inez (mother) & Terry (son)

Fresh out of jail, Inez befriends a quiet foster kid, Terry, on the block she does hair at. When he ends up in the hospital, Inez falsely claims to be his mother before showering him with care and toys. Eventually, Inez abducts the kid to raise him on the run. For years, they lived together on the fringes of society, skirting around the government. As Terry approaches adulthood, he discovers Inez isn't his biological mother, leaving him with mixed emotions. Yet, he can’t help but call her mother because she was one to him. When Inez is questioned about her motivations, she says she took him because she, herself was in foster care, and though she didn’t know how to be a mother, she wanted to have him grow up to be somebody. Seeing as Terry got into a good school, got in little trouble, has various options to choose from, and more, she felt as though she won against the system that brought her to her miserable standing in life. In the end, it’s hard for Terry and probably the audience to really be mad at Inez. Terry probably would have been worse off if she never came for him in the hospital. It’s easy to see the love that Terry holds for his “mother” at the end of the movie when he cries while he helps her escape from the government who have found out about the abduction and are looking to jail her again.

It’s an unconventional story about motherhood, but it’s one about figuring out how to mother without ever having one. It’s also a critique on the “angry black hood woman” caricature because while Inez does fall into the Sapphire stereotype, she’s given humanity. There were several instances in raising Terry where she resorted to harsh words and physical punishment to teach him lessons, often flip-flopping between good and bad moods depending on what life is currently throwing at her. Over time, even when she does “calm down,” she’s still seen by the men around her as being too miserable looking and in dire need of a lesson on being quieter. Yet, Inez’ anger always stems from something— or someone— making her life harder. Her anger and frustration are understandable.

Mattie (mother) & Basil (son)

Mattie wasn’t planning to have a baby. Curiosity and repressed desire led to that not quite consensual encounter. Her parents weren’t planning on it either, being Christian and devout. When Mattie refused to reveal the baby’s dad to her father, he beat her to the ground until his wife fired a shotgun near his head for laying a hand on his baby. Mattie left home with a shamed heart and a little yellow suitcase. She stayed at a boarding house where she worked at a hair salon down the street until a little after her baby was born. Mattie experienced intense separation anxiety with her baby, Basil, not quite trusting anyone to look after him and always trying to make him happy. When a rat bites him, Mattie leaves the boarding home with a frantic heart, a little yellow suitcase, and a baby on her hip. She’s turned away from several doors for either being a mother— “We don’t take children”— or being black— “There is no vacancy, I just forgot to take the sign down.” It wasn’t until she encountered a little old lady, Ms. Eva, where she was invited to stay in her place for free, Basil getting a playmate in Lucile, Ms. Eva’s granddaughter, as well. Mattie doesn’t always do what’s best for Basil, always avoiding upsetting him too much. As such, she doesn’t give him his own bed as he grows older saying he’s too scared of the dark. When Ms. Eva dies and Lucile leaves, Mattie takes on the house and continues to raise Basil there until he’s a teen. When Basil kills a man he felt no remorse over killing— “he’s better off [in social standing] than me”— and breaking an officer’s arm as he resisted arrest, Mattie doesn’t lecture him on his lack of care. She just hears his plea that he wants out of jail because he hated the food, the beds weren’t good, and several other factors. He only complains about his life in jail to Mattie and doesn’t stay to talk to her at all when she visits, simply telling her he wants out before leaving. Mattie puts their house on the line to bail him out, but he still needs to go to the preceding. Basil, after tasting freedom again, doesn’t want to go back and feels he’s not going to have a chance at keeping his freedom, so he bounces without a goodbye leaving Mattie. With a broken heart and her little yellow suitcase, Mattie moves once more to Brewster Place. She can’t speak Basil’s name or talk about what happened.

Mattie’s tale is of a mother who sacrificed much for her child, only to be scorned in the end with a lack of understanding for her sacrifice. In trying to make the Basil happy all the time, he never understood even a modicum of hardship and avoided pain, fear, and other negative emotions like the plague. He learned he could get anything from his mother be it a few dollars to go to a movie and the bail out of jail with enough niggling. If Inez was the mother focused on what the kid needs, Mattie was the one focused on what the kid wants. In both instances, it backfires.

Cora Lee (mother) & Her Seven Kids

Cora Lee is the caricature of a welfare queen, humanized. As a little girl, she always loved her baby dolls and would get a new one each Christmas. The old ones never felt as nice as the new ones. When she grew older, she took this logic into consideration over her own kids. She loves when they’re babies, small, helpless, not talking back. But not so much when they’re older and refuse to listen much. She calls them dumbasses and knuckle heads. She uses passive aggression to try to guilt them into doing what she wants and direct commands in an attempt to strike fear in them. They often go awry. Also, after so many kids, she doesn’t deem every scrape, bump, and bruise they get to be much of an event, particularly when she tells them not to do the thing that earned them that mark of dishonor. Cora Lee feels like her kids are hopeless because of their bad grades and worse behavior. It’s not until Kiswana invites her and her kids to the local Shakespeare play that Cora Lee gets any hope for their situation. The kids are well behaved once Kiswana comes and all the people at Brewster place stare in astonishment at them all dressed up nice and behaving well as they walk over. The play itself was a success too. Midsummer Night’s Dream was adapted to include dancing, music, lights, costumes, and effects that left the audience jiving in their seats and engrossed. By the end, one of Cora Lee’s kids asked if Shakespeare was black to which she responds that he isn’t, not yet. It’s implied that this child may go on to be a playwright or into theatre from this encounter. Cora Lee is practically beaming after being given this chance to see her kids at all ages in a new light.

Kiswana (daughter) & Her Mother

This relationship between mother and daughter is one of miscommunication. Kiswana, or Melanie, feels as though her mother is ashamed of being black and tries to distance herself from that heritage as much as possible. From her mother’s words, it’s possible to think so. She feels that Brewster place isn’t safe— which it isn’t, there are gangs hanging around— and that her daughter should at least have a phone so that her mother and father have a line to reach her. Kiswana, however, hates that the two stopped loving each other in her eyes and more than that, wants to work towards getting a phone herself rather than ask them for money she feels isn’t hers. Kiswana’s mother is angered when she refuses and is accused of being ashamed of her heritage. She says that Melanie thinks that being black is in her curly hair, her skin tone, her name that she chose for herself, and all these other things. But, her mother chose her name because it was the name of a woman in her family that stood up against several white men with a gun to save her husband who had no business doing what he did, but she loved him anyways and stayed strong. She also told her of her other ancestors who didn’t know the meaning of quit and strived for better and better right up until herself. Their cushy house in Linden Hills was a hard fought achievement. Their straight hair, relaxed by perms and the way they dressed and the color of their skin didn’t matter because to her mother, black is black. Being a mother simply meant doing what was best for her child, making sure that her kids were never ashamed of however they looked or whoever they were.

This story demonstrates a lack of communication between mother and daughter as much of this comes out of frustration with the other and finally sitting down to talk about things. I feel like clearer communication between the two on their feelings over their heritage would have sparked more understanding on both of their sides. I don’t think it would have solved all their problems— the mother was really upset over Melanie dropping out of college— but it would have been a start in the right direction.

Lucile (mother) & Serena (daughter)

Lucile spends a great deal of time with Serena while her husband, Eugene, is away doing goddess knows what. When he comes back, Lucile is overjoyed and tries to do anything so that he doesn’t leave again. When she gets pregnant again, she gets and abortion after he gets upset. She looses his job, she offers to pick up another which he also hates— probably because he’s supposed to be the provider but he keeps running into trouble in the pursuit of that. When he expresses his displeasure over Serena getting more attention than him— when she is a baby that needs to be frequently watched and cared for, which he doesn’t seem to understand— Lucile tries to pay more attention to him. Eventually, she tries to make him happy and prevent his leaving so much, the dominos fall on her baby girl. When Eugene comes home to see Mattie and Lucile playing with Serena, he shoos Mattie off and says that Serena could stay right where she is when Mattie offers to take her. Lucile, wanting to please him, agrees and Mattie leaves. Eugene tells Lucile he’s found a job but refuses to give her many details on it. They wind up going to the other room, leaving Serena alone and unwatched. As Eugene refuses to say where he’s going, that he doesn’t want to take the baby and Lucile with him, and that their love isn’t enough to make him stay… Serena, who’d picked up a pair of shiny scissors spotted a cockroach in the wall outlet. Eugene didn’t show up to her funeral. Lucile became catatonic, a deep depression that Mattie needed to coax her out of. Lucile left soon after, taking her clothes and bedspread with her without a goodbye.

This story serves as a warning. Getting hung up on a man who was so upset with their situation, believing Lucile to only be good for “babies and bills” as he states, led to the loss of one of the most precious things to her— Serena’s life. In trying to make her partner stay, to the protest of Mattie who saw much of this situation going down hill and tried to offer advice, Lucile forgot to put her child first. Eugene is also at fault here, of course. A father who refuses to act like one— job or not— and a partner that refuses to stay because of his own discomfort, only ever running away when things don’t go well is essentially useless. Both are supposed to stay for their love and their child through thick and thin. Not doing so has negative consequences on everyone involved and then to not have remorse over it??? Good riddance. While both are at fault, the lesson here is to put ones child first. In my opinion, as well, if the man don’t know how to stay, he doesn’t need to be there in the first place. That’s a lot of going in an out of a child’s life and that instability causes more issues than it solves.

Lorraine (daughter) & Her Mother

Lorraine was kicked out of her house because of her sexuality when she was a teen. Since then, she worked her way through college, found purpose in being a teacher, and met her current partner, Theresa (woman in blue in above picture) where the two had a lovely place in Linden Hills. Or several years, Lorraine would send Christmas cards to her parents, still hoping that they loved her. They’d be returned to her until she stopped putting a return address on them. She assumes they may have threw the cards in the fire. Her parents’ abandonment, especially her mother’s really struck when she tried calling home one day and her mother hung up the phone upon learning it was her daughter on the other end. Her fear of judgment and what being different meant leads to several issues in accepting her own sexuality and the struggles that LGBTQ+ people face in the world. She denies her difference at every turn and gets paranoid and fearful at any rumors that circulate around about her and Theresa, wherever they moved. Lorraine feels wholly uncared for. Later, she’s sexually assaulted by one of the gang members looking to make her right by showing her what a real man is like and make her never look at another woman again. Lorraine is left broken and hysterical in the back alley. When people attempt to help her, she swats them all away with a wood plank she pick up. One unfortunate person was beaten possibly to death because he approached her too quick— it was the man who had a lesbian daughter and comforted Lorraine when she was being discriminated against.

I don’t think I need to expand on this one— in fact it’s hard for me to, I’m lucky I wasn’t thrown out or something. My sexuality just isn’t accepted as a fact.

[blackinperiodfilms]

A rumor needs no true parent. It only needs a willing carrier.

Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

[2othcentury]

The Women of Brewster Place (1989)

[mias-playground]

Cast of The Woman Of Brewster Place, 1989

Cicely Tyson, Oprah Winfrey, Jackée Harry, Robin Givens, Lynn Whitfield, Paula Kelly, Lonette McKee, Mary Alice, Olivia Cole

[iminmypeace]

[quotation--marks]

Time’s passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days. It is silent and elusive, refusing to be dammed and dripped out day by day; it swirls through the mind while an entire lifetime can ride like foam on the deceptive, transparent waves and get sprayed onto the consciousness at ragged, unexpected intervals.

Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

[litandlifequotes]

Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days.

The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

‘No one fits,’ she said at last. ‘Not in the way we want to, at least. But we find our own places. We carve them ourselves, in the work we do, in the people we love.’

ALL THE PAINTED STARS - Coming March 28th!

What do you do when you hear your friend's unwilling hand in marriage is the grand prize in a tournament? You cut off all your hair, steal your brothers' armour and ride in the tournament yourself, of course.

All The Painted Stars is a sapphic medieval romance novel about using the power of ADHD and this sword you found to save your best friend from the shackles of a marriage she doesn't want. Also there's beer.

ATPS is the first sequel to One Night in Hartswood, starring Raff and Penn's sisters Lily and Jo. It is a standalone story, but does contain references to the events of Hartswood.

All the Painted Stars contains...

⭐ Best friends to lovers

⭐ Hidden identities (well, she tries)

⭐ Letter writing

⭐ Women in armour

⭐ "Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you want to go ape shit?"

It's available for pre-order NOW everywhere books are sold!

Full blurb and CW under the cut!

Oxfordshire 1362

When Lily Barden discovers her best friend Johanna’s hand in marriage is being awarded as the main prize at a tournament, she is determined to stop it. Disguised as a knight, she infiltrates the contest, preparing to fight for Jo’s hand. But her conduct ruffles feathers, and when a dangerous incident escalates out of Lily’s control, Jo must help her escape.

Finding safety with a local brewster, Lily and Jo soon settle into their new freedom, and amongst blackberry bushes and lakeside walks an unexpected relationship blossoms. But when Jo’s past catches up with her and Lily’s reckless behaviour threatens their newfound happiness, both women realise that choices must always come at a cost. The question they need to ask is if that cost is worth the price of love…

It also contains explicit on-page sex scenes.

Content warnings:

ATPS contains mention of past emotional and physical abuse, and some mild violence.

Above art (in the lake) by @felrija

[blackinperiodfilms]

A rumor needs no true parent. It only needs a willing carrier.

Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place

[hopelessromanticsavage]

The Women of Brewster’s Place

[veryqueermovies]

Happy Women's History Month!

Here's a list of films about Queer Women! 🏳️‍🌈

For every list I post there's always more films out there, Letterbox'd is a great place to find movies.

(This was supposed to be up yesterday for International Women's Day but I've been sick for while and don't know what day it is ✌🏼)

•

Desert Hearts (1985)

The Women Of Brewster Place (1989)

When Night Is Falling (1995)

Fire (1996)

Bound (1996)

Set it Off (1996)

The Watermelon Woman (1996)

But I'm A Cheerleader (1999)

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Saving Face (2004)

Fingersmith (2005)

Imagine Me & You (2009)

Black Swan (2010)

Cloudburst (2011)

With Every Heartbeat (2011)

Pariah (2011)

The Guest House (2012)

Stud Life (2012)

Liz In September (2014)

Carol (2015)

La Belle Saison (2015)

The Girl King (2015)

Bessie (2015)

Lovesong (2016)

AWOL (2016)

Our Love Story (2016)

Below Her Mouth (2016)

The Handmaiden (2016)

Carmilla (2017)

The Feels (2017)

Disobedience (2017)

Professor Marston And The Wonder Women (2017)

Princess Cyd (2017)

The Favourite (2018)

Duck Butter (2018)

Tell It To The Bees (2018)

Vita & Virginia (2018)

Rafiki (2018)

Hearts Beat Loud (2018)

The Miseducation Of Cameron Post (2018)

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019)

Elisa & Marcella (2019)

Booksmart (2019)

The World To Come (2020)

The Half Of It (2020)

My First Summer (2020)

Ammonite (2020)

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Fear Street Part One (2021)

Fear Street Part Three (2021)

Do Revenge (2022)

Beauty (2022)

[guttersniper]

@vitalphenomena as spirit said: it's strange, isn't it, what sticks with you and what doesn't.

women of brewster place.

an unseen flinch occurs. he doesn't like talking about himself. mutt makes himself sit straighter, hands linked together in the triangle gap between his folded legs. better this way, he thinks.

the question—if it can be called that—doesn't read like she's seeking an answer from him, from anyone. instead, there's a current of something hungry and urgent under her voice like she just wants to be heard, to be listened to. an answer only she can give herself.

it was tiny, the flicker in her eyes, barely there, but mutt saw.

"yes." a safe answer. agreement, not giving away too much. (fact is, he never disagreed with her, even with his knee-jerk self-preservation.)

he inches forward, metaphorically, with his next prompt. "d'you want to tell me about something?"

[limeade-l3sbian]

Can you please talk more about oprah being unhealed? If you have time

Sure. TW for childhood sexual abuse, colorism, and child abuse.

So, while I am heavily critical of Oprah Winfrey as Oprah Winfrey the billionaire, I do hold a great deal of empathy for her as Oprah Winfrey the black woman. Like Tyler Perry, I think this facade of togetherness that she forcibly pushes out to the world is the one thing holding her together.

I had to redo some research because I heard the things I know about her a while ago, but I wanted to get them straight. I'll put the sources below. But Oprah grew up in rural poverty. She wore potato sacks for dresses and was dealing with bullying as well as an abusive grandmother.

She was repeatedly molested by her 19-year old cousin, uncle, and a family friend. As Oprah said: "At nine and 10 and 11 and 12 years old, I was raped by my 19-year-old cousin. I didnt know what rape was. I certainly wasnt aware of the word. I had no idea what sex was, I had no idea where babies came from, I didn`t even know what was happening to me," (wikipedia)

She was six when she had to go live with her mother. And this happened:

Oprah's mother was working as a housemaid at the time, and Oprah can still clearly recall the evening of her arrival at the home in which her mother had a room.

"I remember the first night entering into that house and being told that I wouldn't be able to sleep with my mother and I wouldn't be able to sleep inside the house," Oprah says. "There was a little foyer/porch before you actually got inside the house. I was put outside to sleep there."

Oprah was initially confused by the command, but she later realized that it had to do with race. "My mother was boarding with this very light-skinned black woman who could have passed for white… I could tell instantly when I walked in the room that she didn't like me. It was because of the color of my skin," Oprah says. "I don't know how I knew that, but I did." (source)

She ran away at 13, got pregnant and lost her baby at the age of 14, and years later when she was in her 20s, she revealed the abuse she suffered to her family, only to not be believed.

Oprah is nearly 70 years old and still broke down while talking about the past years of abuse. I don't presume to remotely understand the toll that child sexual abuse takes on a person. I wouldn't dare even insult victims of it by trying to even suggest I know. So that she still has trauma with her is very reasonable. But it is that Oprah speaks often as though she has overcome this through her faith.

And I just don't believe that. You can argue that her obsession with producing black pain (e.g. Precious, For Colored Girls, The Color Purple, The Women of Brewster Place, etc.) are all tales that both help her heal as well as tell stories about the will of black people, specifically women, and how much we survive and push through. But these stories always so hyper focused on the pain. The actors play their roles with an uncomfortable and unnecessary amount of rawness that borders trauma porn.

And this is all my opinion, of course. I don't presume to know Oprah or what's knocking around in her head. But more succinctly put, I think Oprah is only able to truly face the trauma of her past through these stories of other people. She can only really shed tears and really grieve the loss of her childhood through other people's stories. She leans towards stories of black pain because they are mirrors of herself. Religion was all she had. She's said several times that her belief in God is what got her through her worst times. But when you rely so heavily on this thing that requires all the heavy lifting on your end (believing without ever being given proof), you are going to neglect the part of you that needs to be angry. That needs to be vulnerable and critical.

I think for Tyler and Oprah, they think (or know) that if they let themselves be too vulnerable and admit their moments of doubt in the only thing that ever got them through it all, they might crumble in a second.

*I also want to emphasize that Orpah was not credited in For Colored Girls and allegedly did not want Tyler Perry to make the rendition since it was a story about black women. But upon giving her own feedback, she was then on board with it. So she was more of an unofficial consultant. I checked IMDb and Wikipedia and did not see her formally credited.

[quotation--marks]

A neighbour woman entered in studied certainty and stood in the middle of the room. ‘Child, I know how you feel, but don’t do this to yourself. I lost one, too. The Lord will...’ And she choked, because the words were jammed down into her throat by the naked force of Ciel’s eyes. Ciel had opened them fully now to look at the woman, but raw fires had eaten them worse than lifeless - worse than death. The woman saw in that mute appeal for silence the ragings of a personal hell flowing through Ciel’s eyes. And just as she went to reach for the girl’s hand, she stopped as if a muscle spasm had overtaken her body and, cowardly, shrank back. Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron - they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.

Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place