Naylor's fictionalized memoir full of intrigue,
questions
November 27, 2005
BY MARY MITCHELL SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Gloria Naylor, the highly acclaimed author of The
Women of Brewster Place, is back. Unfortunately, the
Chicago Sun-Times book editor declined to review her
latest work, 1996, because the book was released a
couple of months ago.
But I was fascinated by Naylor's subject --
mind-control. And, frankly, I don't think Naylor is
getting her proper due. Besides being a major
African-American writer, in 1996, she raises some
troubling questions about the erosion of freedoms in
this country and our government's ability to put
someone's life under a microscope.
Published by Third World Press, 1996 is Naylor's first
book in seven years. Although there is considerable
confusion over when the manuscript was actually
released, an excerpt appeared in Black Issues Book
Review on Sept. 1. But for the most part, Naylor's
latest manuscript has been uncharacteristically
marginalized.
'I am in a battle for my mind'
In a strange way, that marginalization heightens the
intrigue.
The fictionalized memoir purports to detail what
became of Naylor's life after she moved to a secluded
stretch of St. Helena Island. Her intention was to
spend a year writing in the serene island setting,
plant a garden and spend time enjoying the lifestyle
she had worked hard to obtain.
But shortly after moving into her home, Naylor has a
run-in with an eccentric Jewish neighbor who "had at
least a dozen cats." When "Eunice" refuses to keep the
cats out of Naylor's garden, and Naylor ends up taking
matters into her own hands, the dispute turns ugly.
Eunice's brother also happened to be the head of the
National Security Agency. The bad blood between the
women led to Naylor's being investigated as a
drug-dealer and labeled as a dangerous anti-Semite. It
wasn't long before Naylor discovered that she was
being followed everywhere she went. When the
harassment became unbearable, Naylor fled her Southern
refuge and returned to New York, where the scrutiny
escalated into mind-control.
Of course, this is where the controversy comes in. Did
the events Naylor described actually happen? Did the
writer suffer some kind of nervous breakdown?
"I didn't want to tell this story. It's going to take
courage. Perhaps more courage than I possess, but
they've left me no alternatives," Naylor writes at the
beginning of her book. "I am in a battle for my mind.
If I stop now, they'll have won, and I will lose
myself."
A run-in with a neighbor
After giving readers the bare bones about her
beginnings, Naylor shares a place that was to be her
slice of heaven, but ultimately became her piece of
hell.
"I would sit at a folded table in the sunroom that
gave me a view of the water, drinking my morning
coffee in a pink mug that said 'Hers' in blue
lettering. That table, with its one chair and that
mug, were my only possessions besides a trailer
camping bed that I picked up secondhand. But this,
indeed was mine. I looked over at the plantation house
and thought about how things had come full circle. My
people once worked this land as slaves, and here I
was, owning part of it."
Later, after the run-in with the neighbor, Naylor
describes a fictitious telephone conversation her
neighbor had with her brother:
"What is it, Eunice?"
"Orwell is dead. My baby is gone."
A cat, he thinks. She's calling me about a damn cat.
"Sorry to hear that, Eunice. Was it a peaceful death?
"He was poisoned."
"How do you know that?"
"I had an autopsy. It was rat poison. Gloria Naylor
killed him."
"Who's Gloria Naylor?"
"A woman who lives across the road from me."
"And how do you know she did it?"
"Because she hated my cats. She told me so. And she
hates me, too, because I'm a Jew."
Exorcising demons
Of course, that conversation is fiction because the
only thing Naylor knows for sure is what she claims
happened to her. She could only speculate about the
motivations, as well as the power of people who could
invade a life to the degree they invaded hers.
The author understands that some people will simply
think she is using her writing to cover up a nervous
breakdown.
"I can't worry about that," Naylor said during a
recent telephone interview. "With my entire career, I
try to do the best that I can and leave the rest to
the reader. It is just like child abuse. There are
some people, when the child comes to them and says
'Uncle Johnny did X, Y, Z,' there will be some parents
who will not believe the child, and there is no amount
of evidence that will make them change their minds."
Given the continued debate over some provisions of the
Patriot Act, Naylor's "fictionalized memoir" raises
the right questions at the right time.
Writing the book was a "real catharsis," Naylor said.
"It was like purging. But really, it was no different
from the other books I have written in that each of
them exorcised from me some sort of demon."
__________________________________________
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