By Ayanna Woods
July 31, 2021
One day last fall, as I was processing Gloria Naylor’s correspondence as the archive’s Research Assistant, I came across an enthusiastic letter from Lucille Clifton (1936-2010) to Gloria Naylor, in which Clifton raves about The Women of Brewster Place (1982). As a fan of both authors, I immediately took interest in this letter and checked to see if the archive contains other correspondence between the two authors. Scholarship on Naylor’s correspondence is not yet a part of the critical history of her work, likely because it was not available until the last decade. The letters between Naylor and Clifton offer a case study of the interpretive possibilities the correspondence in the archive opens up.
These letters present a different picture of the ways Naylor’s art was engaged with the literary work of her contemporaries, like Lucille Clifton. I call this intimate criticism, because it takes place in usually informal epistolary exchanges, often between friends. Intimate criticism is important in that it represents a model of literary criticism, traceable only in the archive, as a non-hierarchical conversation between friends. Clifton’s and Naylor’s conversations about literature begin from Clifton’s respect for Naylor as a writer and thinker. A prolific writer of both poetry and prose herself, Clifton had received much critical acclaim for her writing. She was also a professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She wrote to Naylor to express support and even recommended her for professorship at UC Santa Cruz at one point. In December of 1992, Clifton sent a handwritten thank you note to Naylor for an inscribed copy of Bailey’s Cafe. This is followed by a letter from Clifton in January of 1993 in which she offers personal updates on her health as well as a profound analysis of both Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe. Naylor writes a response to this letter about a month later in which she briefly thanks Clifton for her engagement and praise, and compliments her reading of the novels (Box 6, Folder 1).
Naylor’s and Clifton’s discussion of point of view offers an example of intimate criticism, as the writers work out their aesthetic philosophies in relation to one another and in relation to Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In September of 1994, Clifton writes Naylor wondering when, as a fan, she’ll have more of Naylor’s writing to read. She shares that she has watched the 1989 film adaptation of The Women of Brewster Place, and gives her opinion, saying:
I thought it well done, but although the characters were well cast and showed their inner kindness, I never think that a movie is as good as the book. Somehow my own imagination is more vivid. The extremely painful ending was not nearly so much so in the picture. (Box 7, Folder 2)
She then moves on, looking to discuss Toni Morrison’s novels, paying most attention to Beloved. She writes: “Beloved I admit I do not understand. When we studied history, we learned about the ‘savers’ on the underground railroad, not the ‘saved’. I had never realized that before.” She asks Naylor to explain the Morrison novel.
In Naylor’s response, sent in November of the same year, she agrees with Clifton’s musings on the difference between television and the novel. And, she responds to Clifton’s question about Beloved as follows:
…what struck me the most about the novel was the power of a mother’s love. My new novel will touch on slavery and I believe that like any experience there is no exclusive point of view. We all bring ourselves to our view of historical events. (Box 7, Folder 2)
Clifton provides intimate criticism of Naylor’s fiction as well. In her 1993 letter Clifton explains her admiration for Naylor’s “style” by sharing something from her own life. She writes, “when I was a child, one of my great problems was that I could not understand why I could not know what other people were thinking.” She goes on, explaining that from this problem came her knowledge that “point of view was extremely important in stories.” On the kinds of point of view, she writes: “omniscience disturbed me as unrealistic and first person was as limited as I.” In Mama Day, which is told through chapters in the voices of George, Cocoa, and the collective voice of the folks in Willow Springs, Naylor removes the limitations that frustrated Clifton from childhood. Clifton praises this aspect of the novel: “That was what fascinated me about Mama Day: everything was known through the perception of three sympathetic characters. That I can manage and it gave me a full real world”.
Clifton writes this letter with care and sincerity, engaging in a profound discussion of the nature of human thought and perspective and how both affect narrative style in Mama Day. And by using her own childhood mind as an entry point, she makes it personal as well. Her praise of Naylor’s use of point of view as a tool for world-building in the novel comes immediately after the explanation of her childhood conundrum, which positions it as the answer to a life-long problem. Within this compliment lies a reading experience that moved Clifton deeply. She is not simply praising Naylor for creating a three-dimensional world. She is praising her for creating characters who experience this world differently and stitching their stories together seamlessly. In writing her novel this way, Naylor was able to satisfy the young girl within Clifton who still wants to know what everyone is thinking. This moment is an excellent example of intimate criticism. Clifton is presenting a sophisticated analysis of Mama Day but she is also having a conversation with a friend. As a writer, scholar, and professor of contemporary literature, she brings expertise to her reading of the novel. Yet, because she never published literary criticism on Naylor’s work, this analysis is available only in the archive, on endearing stationery, bordered with seasonal flowers, colorful birds, or musical notes on a staff.
In her response, Naylor engages in a bit of intimate criticism herself in addition to addressing the personal points in Clifton’s letter as a friend. She writes that she found Clifton’s “readings” of Mama Day and Bailey’s Cafe “both sensitive and learned.” Naylor’s choice to affirm and reassure Clifton here is important, as it reflects the aforementioned mutual interest and appreciation that lies at the heart of this epistolary relationship. Furthermore, by affirming Clifton’s interpretation of what makes Mama Day so powerful, Naylor participates in the intimate criticism of her own work, and gives us a small clue as to what she felt about her own use of point of view in the novel.
The intimate criticism in Naylor’s September 1994 letter also includes a discussion of Naylor’s fiction in relation to that of Toni Morrison, another of her contemporaries. Clifton’s thoughts on Beloved explore what she thinks has created the need for such a work and, implicitly perhaps, her desire for Naylor’s distinctive take on the issue. Naylor’s response provides a glimpse of the way Naylor approached her contemporaries’ work. Naylor’s brief answer to Clifton’s question about Beloved followed by her comment that there is “no exclusive point of view” can be interpreted as a statement about there being room for both her and Toni Morrison’s approach to writing on the same topic. The statement reflects Naylor’s commitment to putting her writing and ideas in conversation—and not competition—with her peers in order to build networks of creative exchange and mutual support.
My analysis of these letters figures into published critical conversations about Gloria Naylor and parallels the work of contemporary memory workers across many different interpretive communities. At universities and in grassroots archival spaces, Black memory workers are building an investigation into networks of Black women writers and the untold stories available to us in archival histories. These efforts are informed by a desire to see reemergence of less-celebrated Black women writers of the 20th century like Naylor and Clifton as well as a desire to reclaim the collections and legacies of these authors, as a means of making them more accessible to the communities for which the authors themselves wrote. At the core of all this is a larger—and much needed—epistemological shift that can expand our definitions of literature, criticism, and scholarship. As I have traced through Naylor and Clifton’s correspondence, intimate criticism contributes both to traditional venues for literary criticism and those that are outside of academia altogether. There is so much that we can learn from Naylor’s correspondence, and as it continues to become more accessible, perhaps intimate criticism will become a larger part of our conversations about Gloria Naylor.