The Men of Brewster Place

Content Warning: This section discusses racism, violence, death and murder, anti-gay bias, sexual abuse and violence, and addiction.

Ben is the most consistent narrative voice in The Men of Brewster Place, appearing in his own chapter and narrating parts of other characters’ stories. Ben is the super of Brewster Place and has lived on the block for many years. He was the first Black man to arrive on the block in the 1950s when it was populated by Italians and “a sprinkling of Irish” (4). Over the years, he watched the demographic change as Brewster Place grew “a little shabbier” and became inhabited primarily by African Americans. At the end of The Women of Brewster Place, Ben is murdered by Lorraine after C.C. Baker and his gang brutally rape her. However, in a brief author’s note preceding the novel, Naylor reveals that she takes “poetic license to resurrect his spirit and voice” as a narrator. This is perhaps because Ben embodies many struggles that the other Black male characters face throughout the book.

Ben grew up in Tennessee, where he was raised by his sharecropper grandparents. He spent his young adulthood in Memphis, working first in a hotel and later as a “shoeshine boy” at the train depot.