Jaimie D. Okusko

Embracing Their Sexuality: Gloria Naylor's Women of Bailey's Cafe: What Women Want: Independence Through Embracing the Inner Spirit: Naylor's Bailey's Cafe Jaimie D. Okusko

Gloria Naylor?s Bailey?s Café gives a complex picture of the historically limited choices of identity black women have faced. Each character depicts an approach to the objectified black female body and its domination by patriarchal society. Moreover, through her novel Naylor investigates many traditions through which individuals come to understand the power of their inner spirit and how they use their understanding of that spirituality to find peace of mind, pride, and beauty. This novel investigates the duality of the U. S. society where men are allowed more freedom of expression, sexually, than women. When women attempt to express and find fulfillment in their sexual identities, they are viewed as promiscuous and unfit. Through redefining and adapting their own Christian spirituality, however, they begin to live rich, if unconventional, lives on their own terms. In Bailey?s Café inner spirituality comes in many forms including, but not limited to sexuality, gender definition, self love, and self acceptance. Furthermore, by redefining that which society has deemed unfit and embracing their inner spirituality, Naylor?s characters have gained individuality and independence.