Our Favorite Movies Adapted From Black Books
The Women of Brewster Place
In 1989, Oprah’s Harpo Productions produced The Women of Brewster Place, a TV miniseries based on the 1982 novel by Gloria Naylor about a group of women living in a housing project. It’s all-star cast, which included Cicely Tyson, Jackee Harry, Robin Givens, Oprah, of course, and a young Larenz Tate saw the project to massive success, and it was quickly reworked into a regularly weekly series entitled Brewster Place.
Sadly, the series failed to maintain the level of viewership and critical acclaim so highly set by the miniseries and was scrapped after just one month.
“The young black woman and the old yellow woman sat in the kitchen for hours, blending their lives so that what lay behind one and ahead of the other became indistinguishable.”
-Gloria Naylor, The Women of Brewster Place
