The Men of Brewster Place

“But let me tell you about men: If you put him on the likes of a Park Avenue and he feels he has no worth, then it’s not Park Avenue. If you put him on the likes of a Chicago South Side and he feels he has worth, then it’s not the South Side. We all live inside.”

Much of the novel is concerned with men who are trying to discern and exemplify the specific qualities of manhood. In this passage, Ben argues that self-worth is a man’s defining quality. It is not his place in the world that matters but rather his sense of self and confidence.

“I don’t know fancy words, but I do know men. And the ones here, proud most of ’em, pitiful some—but hard working, all of ’em. If they was working at a job or just working at despair. And with each of ’em—no matter who he was—there was always a Her in his story.”

This passage speaks to the intertwined nature of men’s and women’s lives and undermines the myth that poverty results from laziness. Ben argues that all the men living in Brewster Place work hard and hope for a better life. However, they have few opportunities to escape the poverty and discrimination that plague them.

“Near to sixty-eight years old when I look back over my life, one of the things that bothers me the most is that I ain't never been in a situation where anybody ever called me sir.”

Here, Ben begins his life story. His lament that no one has ever called him “sir” speaks to how Black men struggle to gain respect. Although Ben has worked hard his whole life and is now an older man, he has never been addressed with a respectful title.

“But they all remain silent. As if Sister didn’t live or—more important—hadn’t died. As if none of it had happened. And that is when he understands that—freedom or no freedom—his people are doomed. It doesn’t matter what’s in their hearts; what’s in your heart only God hears. But they—each of them—need to hear, among themselves somewhere, somehow, that this was wrong. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, the minister had said. And Grandpa had yelled out No. No, he don’t. All eyes turned to him before his mother slapped him. Boy, shut your mouth, you hear? Shut your mouth. Be a man.”

This passage describes Ben’s grandfather’s experience after the death of his sister. No one, Black or white, spoke up about the injustice of her death. Even among themselves, the enslaved people on the plantation refused to acknowledge the wrongdoing. In this context, being a man means being silent and bearing the injustices enacted against him. Ben’s grandfather grew into a bitter old man weighed down by the weight of his silence.

“The man who smiled the most and popped his rag usually got a taker. What was there about white folks that made them feel comfortable when a Negro smiled? It seemed they worried about us being angry; maybe because they felt they would be if they were in our place.”

Here, Ben describes working as a “shoeshine boy” in the Memphis train depot. To get white customers, the Black men had to smile, appearing compliant, unthreatening, and even happy in their menial jobs. This illustrates the social construction of the power dynamic between Black and white men. White men, consciously or unconsciously, recognize the unfair treatment of Black men by acknowledging that they would feel angry if treated the same way. Therefore, white men imagine Black men to be somehow less manly and thus less deserving of the respect and dignity that white men garner.

“Elvira comes across the porch and sneers into my face. If you was half a man, you coulda given me more babies and we woulda bad some help workin’ this land instead of a half-grown woman we gotta carry the load for. And if you was even a quarter of a man, we wouldn’t be a bunch of miserable sharecroppers on someone else’s land—but we is, Ben. And I’ll be damned if I’ll see the little bit we got taken away ’cause you believe that gal’s low-down lies. So when Mister Clyde come by here, you speak—hear me? And you act as grateful as your pitiful ass should be for the favors he done us.”

Elvira blamed Ben for their poverty, claiming that a so-called real man would provide for his family. The systemic racism and generational disadvantage that Ben and Elvira faced limited their options and forced them into life as sharecroppers. Ben was not responsible, but the attack on his manhood created a sense of personal failure, and the guilt and incompetence he felt caused him to avoid speaking up and protecting his daughter from the abuse perpetrated by her white employer.

“Nobody knows my true story—and never will—and it is my turn to be the silent old man as I inherit more than my share of the pain riding on the question, What does it mean to be a man?”

Like his grandfather, Ben has become a silent old man struggling with the guilt of being unable to protect the women in his family. Their repeated experience underscores the generational experience of trauma and oppression. Neither was able to protect the women they loved from the abuse of other men, and this casts doubt on their sense of manhood.

“At seventeen he couldn’t write his own name; couldn't count money or go to the store by himself; but he could make that piano tell any story that he wanted. And it was your story if you listened real hard.”

This passage describes Brother Jerome, a boy with an intellectual disability and an amazing gift for playing the piano. Jerome’s music connects all the men of Brewster Place, giving voice to their shared sadness, pain, and frustration.

“You know, Helen, we keep talking and talking about the situation with young black men. They’re an endangered species; they're a lost generation; on and on…I can’t solve the problems of a whole generation; but there are two little kids right here who I can help. So why not? Why couldn’t I stay in their lives forever—why couldn’t we both?”

Here, Basil talks to his girlfriend, Helen, explaining why he wants to be a father to her cousin’s sons. Basil grew up fatherless and understands that Black men in his community often lack positive male role models. With Keisha’s boys, Basil saw an opportunity to have a direct and positive influence on the young men’s lives.

“And so we had yet another fight behind a closed bedroom door. Maybe some of this was my fault. Maybe if I’d concentrated on being as good a husband as I did a father, I could have saved the marriage.”

Basil’s marriage to Keisha eventually dissolved because of his single-minded focus on fatherhood. To Keisha, Basil’s lack of sexual interest in her undermined his masculinity, and she pursued a relationship with someone she considered a so-called “real man” because of his desire for her. Basil, for all his effort to become a good man and father, was separated from his children for neglecting other necessary aspects of manhood.

“Six years of them never getting the letters or cards I sent. Six years of never being allowed to visit me. Jason was fifteen years old and Eddie was thirteen when I finally got out. Keisha was living with Penny, an on-again-off-again junkie, who’d aged her well past her years. Jason had already done time himself in juvenile detention for car theft and aggravated assault. And little Eddie had built a shell around himself, hard and permanent: He said he didn’t know me. And that he didn’t want to.”

Despite Basil’s best efforts to support Jason and Eddie, he was forced to abandon them, and they fell into the patterns of bitterness and criminality that he hoped to avoid. This passage speaks to the systemic nature of the problems that Black men face in the novel. Even when they recognize and work hard to escape the system, sometimes a different outcome is impossible.

“So he moved forward, caught in limbo, and left to define himself. He took his mutilated, caramel-colored body and dressed it in metallic bodysuits. He let his hair grow long since it gave him more options to dress it in rhinestones, feathers, or getting it dyed to a flaming red or even blond. Perfect nails. Perfect makeup. He finally decided that since he could be anything—anything at all—he would use each waking breath finding a way to be seen as more than beautiful—divine.”

This passage describes Chino, a transgender sex worker that Eugene met at the local gay bar. Chino’s character speaks to the performative aspect of gender and its flexibility once outside of socially constructed boxes. The standards of manhood that seem so inflexible to the novel’s characters are social inventions. In reality, gender is malleable and unfixed. An individual might be a man or woman or may eschew commonly accepted labels of gender altogether and simply be “divine.”

“I was a man; and you would no longer see me as a man—your man—but as some sort of freak. Yes, Ceil, I decided right then and there that you would hate me as much as I hated myself.”

Here, Eugene contemplates what might have happened if Ceil learned that he was gay. His line of thinking suggests that being a man and being gay are fundamentally incompatible. He projects his own self-hatred onto Ceil, assuming that she would share his disdain for himself if she were to learn of his gay identity.

“Add to that his full head of hair, which, while turning gray, only augmented his elegance and sophistication and his burnished copper skin, still smooth and supple, and we’re talking a magnificent specimen of a man—oh, yeah—undeniably magnificent.”

This passage describes how Reverend Moreland T. Woods sees himself. Successful, powerful, and well-connected, Woods oozes with arrogance and exaggerated self-confidence. He considers himself far above the poor Black men who call Brewster Place home.

“His father came back from Vietnam with one leg and three of his fingers blown off. A bitter man, he keeps his Purple Heart framed and on the living room wall: to remind him that this country ain’t worth shit as he fights the V.A. to raise his disability pension. His mother works full-time to keep them off welfare. But there are six children in this home—two his father brought from another marriage—and only so much energy to go around. They lost the oldest boy, Hakim, to the streets and he hasn’t been home in three years. So they tried harder with C.C. but the streets call to him as well with the promise of everything he sees missing in his father’s life: money, power, and respect.”

This passage describes the lure that the streets hold for C.C. Baker. Growing up in poverty, the most significant man in C.C.’s life was his father, an angry man with a disability who lacked any kind of wealth or power. With limited resources and education, the only way C.C. understood to avoid replicating his father’s life was to turn to a life of crime.

“The Man does not disappoint. His office. His suit. His haircut. His manicure. All well above top-shelf. There is nothing in that room that does not say elegant and good taste.”

Beetle Royal is Brewster Place’s top drug dealer, perhaps the neighborhood’s most influential man. Referring to him as “The Man” underscores the connection between power and manhood. Everything about him exudes competency and influence, drawing in the impressionable C.C. Baker.

“It was to be his mission to act as their eyes and ears—their voice on issues affecting the black community. They believed him and worked like demons to get him elected on one of the smallest margins in the city’s history, but still enough to win him a seat. And no sooner did he take off his hat and jacket than he betrayed them. The wall was coming down and Brewster Place was slated to be condemned and the whole area rebuilt as middle-income housing—condos as a matter of fact.”

After Reverend Woods is elected to the city council, he betrays the people who voted for him and approves the demolition of Brewster Place. This action substantiates his greed and selfishness and underscores the disadvantages of poverty and classism that Brewster Place’s residents face. Even other Black people like Reverend Woods are prepared to take advantage and then abandon the people of Brewster Place.

“He made it real clear to them that this was his territory—his rules—and if they needed to flex their muscles, they were welcome to try. And he showed many that just because he was kind, it didn’t mean he was weak.”

In this passage, Abshu describes his experiences with young men at the community center. On the one hand, Abshu embraces traditional ideas of masculinity. He is the community center’s “alpha male” and isn’t afraid to put other young men in their place and defend “his territory.” However, he is also kind and caring and never doubts the validity of his own manhood.

“Abshu knew that Woods wasn’t meeting with him because he couldn’t look him in the eye and get what he needed for his own self-respect: a mutual agreement for them both to operate as if they believed that the next promises would not be broken; and the next, and the next…”

Abshu suggests that Woods maintains his self-respect as a man by lying to himself about his intention to keep his political promises. Abshu refuses to corroborate this lie. Therefore, meeting with Abshu would force Woods to face his own hypocrisy and lack of integrity.

“The men who sit in there, reading the papers, playing checkers, or just socializing, done solved every problem in the world before the shop closes each day. And they’re in there the next day to solve ’em all over again. It seems that no one’s listened to them and so the world stayed in the same mess from the day before. It’s a thankless job, being an armchair—or barber chair—politician. The issues they solve boil down to three subjects: white men, black men, and women. The white man carries all the guilt for messing up the world; the black man gets all the blame; and women are just a downright confusing issue that a hundred barbershop politicians wouldn't be able to solve.”

This passage describes Max’s barbershop, where the men of Brewster Place congregate. It is a place where the men can come together, build community, and be themselves without pressure from women or white men. They can exercise their own agency and responsibility and take the problems of the world into their own hands.

“And maybe things woulda worked out different if we had realized that was the case with Greasy—he was bleeding inside. But we were so busy being thankful that we weren’t him; so busy judging and feeling superior, pitting our half a minds against his none, that we forgot he was our ‘brother’ and where he goes we go—if we like it or not.”

Here, Ben describes how the men of Brewster Place failed to come together and support Greasy. The men’s struggles are interconnected, bound by their shared oppression and marginalization. However, instead of recognizing their shared experience, the other men saw themselves as better than Greasy. They denied their connection, and this led to Greasy’s tragic death.

“For no reason—or at least I should say—for no godly reason that anyone could tell, Greasy moved toward Henry’s chair, grabbed the straight razor on the counter, then grabbed Henry from behind and held the razor to his neck. Every man in there became still as a stone. ‘I’m a man…I’m a man…’ Greasy kept saying over and over.”

Greasy, with his stock phrases “I’m a man” and “I’m trying,” illustrates the damage done to Black men’s identities as they strive to achieve ideals of masculinity as defined by white society. Greasy finally snapped, trying to assert his manhood in one last attempt to seize power before he cut his own throat.

“This is the only place for us men to get together, to look into each other’s eyes and see what we need to see—that we do more than just exist—we thrive and are alive.”

Ben closes by describing the importance of the barbershop in Brewster Place’s male community. It is a place where the men can connect and affirm one another’s worth independent of the impossible standards of masculinity held up in white society.