SOURCE: Montgomery, Maxine Lavon. “Authority, Multivocality, and the New World Order in Gloria Naylor's Bailey's Cafe.” African American Review 29, no. 1 (spring 1995): 27–33.

In the following essay, Montgomery discusses the biblical allusions in Bailey's Cafe and asserts that the work is a culmination of Naylor's three previous novels.

Bailey's Cafe, Gloria Naylor's latest and most ambitious novel to date, is a hauntingly lyrical text steeped in biblical allusion. With this fourth novel, which completes a series including The Women of Brewster Place, Linden Hills, and Mama Day, Naylor acquired the self-confidence necessary to define herself as a writer. Bailey's Cafe “took me through the final step,” Naylor remarked during a recent book tour stop. “I had envisioned four novels that would lay the foundation for a career. This one finishes that up” (qtd. in Due F2).

In what is part of her ongoing search for an authorial voice with which...