Bailey's Cafe

Bailey’s Cafe has the rhythm of music-and the power of religious allegory. Beneath its symbolic overlay are tales of fractured lives that will move even the most hardened reader * Vogue *Gloria Naylor is gifted with timeless wisdom, bottomless empathy, and limitless language. Her novels will shine a light for readers and writers for generations to come. – Tayari Jones, author of AN AMERICAN MARRIAGETold in contrasting shades of harsh, comic and magic realism … Crackles with passion and wit … An unforgettable successor to Ellison’s metaphor of the invisible man, and as incandescent * Los Angeles Times *A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humour * New York Times Book Review *A powerhouse of a novel … It is a book with something of a comic Ellisonian or Faulknerian rhythm, a defiantly hopeful stance. Bailey’s Cafe absorbs us in the mastery of its telling. * New York Newsday *Gutsy … A collective blues performance in prose - a lyrical remembrance and triumph over personal catastrophe … A sublime achievement * People *A lacy, near-mystical cantata sung by several voices. This mix of myth, history and mysticism … offers a sensibility as rich in potential as that of the Latin American magical realists … Moving and memorable – Gail Caldwell * Boston Globe *Irrefutably, Gloria Naylor was one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. Every single one of her works was masterful, crafted with the kind of rare artistic brilliance that places her in extremely limited company. She is likely best known for her National Book Award-winning debut work, The Women of Brewster Place, but that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Whether the divine Bailey’s Cafe, the haunting Linden Hills, or the exquisite Mama Day (one of my favorite novels of all-time), Naylor’s skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love-which is to say, life-is extraordinary. There is something both mundane and cosmic about her writing that captures the human condition in a way that perhaps no other writer did or will. Her work is, for me, a shout, a praisesong, a hosanna, a hallelujah, a Black fist in the air; àse! She holds a hallowed place in the canon, and also in hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits. She was one of the blessed ones – Robert Jones, Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling novel, THE PROPHETSA dazzling novel. When you enter Bailey’s Cafe, you won’t leave without being touched by the wonder and the horror that lie there * Entertainment Weekly *

Gloria Naylor (1950-2016) was born in New York City. She received her B.A. in English from Brooklyn College and her M.A. in Afro-American studies from Yale. Her books include The Women of Brewster Place, which won both the American Book Award and the National Book Award for first novel and was also adapted into a film by Oprah Winfrey; Linden Hills; Mama Day; Bailey’s Cafe and The Men of Brewster Place. She taught writing and literature at George Washington University, New York University, Boston University, and Cornell University.

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