Real Life of an MSW

Linden Hills by Gloria Naylor (1985, 304 pages) Linden Hills, like Bailey’s Café, is yet another complex book that I would not put in the “easy-to-read” category. I read this book over 20 years ago. I never forgot how wonderful, haunting, vivid, and compelling the story was. Naylor began Linden Hills while at Yale as a part of her thesis. It is a very clever reworking of Dante’s Inferno, revealing the dark empty heart of a Black community striving for status under white capitalism. Naylor’s skillful story development allows the reader to explore rich themes around race, class, sexuality, and more while getting lost in the unfolding narratives. Willie, the main character and narrator, along with his best friend Lester, takes us on a journey through the community of Linden Hills the week of Christmas, and its interesting neighbors. They introduce us to people like Luther Needed (all 3 of them), Willa Prescott-Needed, Rev. Michael T. Hollis, and Laurel Dumont to name a few. What the story reveals is greed, the need for power and more power, and the hierarchy of what they believed life to truly be. Some parts of the book can be confusing. Naylor switches scenes-and typeface to allow the reader to understand the historical roots of this story. The book is also filled with plenty of poetry but it’s interesting enough to keep you reading until the end. Naylor beautifully fuses together various parts of narratively disjointed fiction into one integrated whole, she also, through language, fuses “memory” to a present reality to create an integrated page turner.