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Mattie Michael
Kiswana Browne is a tall, pretty young woman from a middle-class Black family who becomes passionately invested in radical politics in college. She changes her name from “Melanie” to “Kiswana,” decides that college is bourgeois and counterrevolutionary, and drops out. Afterward, she moves into Brewster Place to live among poor Black people and understand what she thinks of as “real” social problems. During this time, she begins dating Abshu, who directs the nearby community center and has a foot fetish. When Kiswana’s more conservative, middle-class mother Mrs. Browne visits her new apartment in Brewster Place for the first time, they fight bitterly about politics—but when Kiswana asks Mrs. Browne about her red toenail polish and Mrs. Browne evasively admits that Kiswana’s father wanted her to wear it, Kiswana realizes her father is a foot fetishist. She feels suddenly much closer to her mother, and the two women reconcile. Later, Kiswana starts a tenants’ association in Brewster Place with the goal of pressuring their neglectful, absentee landlord to invest in repairs. She befriends single mother Cora Lee and defends shy schoolteacher Lorraine against homophobic abuse by C.C. Baker. Toward the novel’s end, Kiswana is organizing a block party to raise money for a lawyer to sue Brewster Place’s landlord.
Kiswana Browne Quotes in The Women of Brewster Place
The The Women of Brewster Place quotes below are all either spoken by Kiswana Browne or refer to Kiswana Browne. 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:
).
4. Kiswana Browne
Quotes
“At least I’m here in day-to-day contact with the problems of my people. What good would I be after four or five years of a lot of white brainwashing in some phony, prestige institution, huh? I’d be like you and Daddy and those other educated blacks sitting over there in Linden Hills with a terminal case of middle-class amnesia.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I’ll be damned, the young woman thought, feeling her whole face tingle. Daddy’s into feet! And she looked at the blushing woman on her couch and suddenly realized that her mother had trod through the same universe that she herself was now traveling.
6. Cora Lee
Quotes
“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.
7. The Two
Quotes
“The Good Book says them things is an abomination against the Lord. We shouldn’t be havin’ that here on Brewster and the association should do something about it.”
“My Bible also says in First Peter not to be a busybody in other people’s matters, Sophie. And the way I see it, if they ain’t bothering what goes on in my place, why should I bother ‘bout what goes on in theirs?”
Get the entire The Women of Brewster Place LitChart as a printable PDF.
Kiswana Browne Quotes in The Women of Brewster Place
The The Women of Brewster Place quotes below are all either spoken by Kiswana Browne or refer to Kiswana Browne. 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:
).
4. Kiswana Browne
Quotes
“At least I’m here in day-to-day contact with the problems of my people. What good would I be after four or five years of a lot of white brainwashing in some phony, prestige institution, huh? I’d be like you and Daddy and those other educated blacks sitting over there in Linden Hills with a terminal case of middle-class amnesia.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
I’ll be damned, the young woman thought, feeling her whole face tingle. Daddy’s into feet! And she looked at the blushing woman on her couch and suddenly realized that her mother had trod through the same universe that she herself was now traveling.
6. Cora Lee
Quotes
“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.
7. The Two
Quotes
“The Good Book says them things is an abomination against the Lord. We shouldn’t be havin’ that here on Brewster and the association should do something about it.”
“My Bible also says in First Peter not to be a busybody in other people’s matters, Sophie. And the way I see it, if they ain’t bothering what goes on in my place, why should I bother ‘bout what goes on in theirs?”
