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Lucielia “Ciel” Louise Turner
As a girl, Cora Lee is obsessed with baby dolls. She is awestruck when her mother informs her that she can make a real baby herself by having sex. As a sophomore in high school, she gets pregnant and drops out of school. Years later, she is living in a dirty, dilapidated apartment in Brewster Place with seven children, including a new baby. She has had a few long-term romantic partners over the years, one of whom beat her; now she restricts herself to one-night stands with men who leave her apartment before her children get up in the morning. Cora loves and carefully attends to the needs of her new baby, but she neglects her older children, who act out and refuse to attend school in consequence. When Kiswana knocks on Cora Lee’s door while recruiting for the Brewster Place tenants’ association, Kiswana quickly realizes that Cora Lee’s children are cooped-up and frustrated. She pressures Cora Lee to bring the entire family to an all-Black production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream organized by her boyfriend Abshu. Cora Lee and her children find the play unexpectedly moving, and Cora Lee resolves to be a better, more involved mother and get involved in her children’s education. Yet after she tucks her children into bed that night, she shoves down her memory of the play and has another one-night stand, suggesting that she may continue having new babies and neglecting her older children.
Cora Lee Quotes in The Women of Brewster Place
The The Women of Brewster Place quotes below are all either spoken by Cora Lee or refer to Cora Lee. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
6. Cora Lee
Quotes
He silently turned from the anger that his seeming unreasonableness fixed on his wife’s face, because there were no words for the shudder that went through his mind at the memory of the dead brown plastic resting on his daughter’s protruding breasts.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Mama,” Sammy pulled on her arm, “Shakespeare’s black?”
“Not yet,” she said softly, remembering she had beaten him for writing the rhymes on her bathroom walls.
[S]he turned and firmly folded her evening like gold and lavender gauze deep within the creases of her dreams, and let her clothes drop to the floor.
Get the entire The Women of Brewster Place LitChart as a printable PDF.
Cora Lee Quotes in The Women of Brewster Place
The The Women of Brewster Place quotes below are all either spoken by Cora Lee or refer to Cora Lee. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
6. Cora Lee
Quotes
He silently turned from the anger that his seeming unreasonableness fixed on his wife’s face, because there were no words for the shudder that went through his mind at the memory of the dead brown plastic resting on his daughter’s protruding breasts.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“Mama,” Sammy pulled on her arm, “Shakespeare’s black?”
“Not yet,” she said softly, remembering she had beaten him for writing the rhymes on her bathroom walls.
[S]he turned and firmly folded her evening like gold and lavender gauze deep within the creases of her dreams, and let her clothes drop to the floor.
