Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Éva Miklódy: Redefining the "Other ": Race, Gender, Class, and Violence in Gloria Nay lor's Bailey's Café

Women of Brewster Place. Moreover, Bailey 's Café also breakes new ground in the sense that it introduces yet another factor on the basis of which the concept of the "other" can further be expanded. Naylor, in this book, offers a new perspective from which to re/consider the notion of the "other," by acutely describing the shared experience of violence of all of the book's characters. What follows from this is the fact that it is all of society's victims, who, as the critic Mark Ledbetter argues, "have inherited the scars of marginality from the abuse imposed on their previous generations" and who, therefore, "willingly embrace violence done to their bodies and even inflict violence to their own bodies," that can be termed as the "other" (Ledbetter 39). In accordance with what he also says, that is, that "violence characterizes otherness," (22) violence seems to be a paramount experience for all of the characters of Naylor's novel. Bailey has gone through the hell of Pearl Harbor; Gabe, the Jew, has had a "front-row seat" in the holocaust. Both male and female characters suffer sexual assault as well, of which rape is a major type. Women's bodies are, however, violated sexually in so many ways that rape as a sexually violent act has to be also reconsidered. Sadie's mother, a prostitute, for example, uses a coathanger to abort the unwanted consequences of her regularly "being raped." Sadie is the product of one case when the coathanger failed to operate properly. She hears her mother say "The One the Coathanger Missed" so often that she thinks for a while that is her real name. Sadie's mother, in fact, exemplifies those who both embrace and inflict violence to their bodies. Sadie, who suffers from her mother's lack of love for her, follows in her mother's footsteps: in order to regain her mother's love, she also prostitutes herself and uses peroxide on a pair of forcepts to kill her unwanted children. Esther is sold by her brother to a rich boss so that he can derive material gain. As a grave consequence for Esther, she has to satisfy the sexual fantasies of her brother's sado-mazochistic landlord for twelve years. Down in the cellar where she is taken each time, she painfully realizes that she will soon have to learn how to "play" with the sharp-edged "leather-andmetal things" that the boss calls "toys" and she will equally learn that "in the dark, words have a different meaning" {Bailey's 97). Stanley, though not actually raped, experiences the threat of rape when in prison for refusing to fight in the war, which is almost as dreadful as rape itself. As he says, "[he] was never raped, because [he] 62