"This collection of essays treats Gloria Naylor's novels Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe, recognized by scholars and critics as her most significant works. Long understood to be a major African-American woman writer, Gloria Naylor is finally gaining recognition as a contemporary American writer who needs no qualifiers or adjectives before her name. One of the few critical studies of her work, this text represents the work of a group of scholars who are looking seriously and carefully at Naylor, attempting to determine her place, not within an intellectual tradition, but rather within several traditions."--BOOK JACKET.