Mama Day by Gloria Naylor

First published: 1988

Type of plot: Melodrama

Time of work: The 1980’s

Locale: Willow Springs, a fictitious island off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, and New York City

Principal Characters:

• Ophelia (Cocoa) Day, a young woman who has left her family and heritage on Willow Springs to live in New York City
• George Johnson, an African American man whom Cocoa meets in New York
• Miranda (Mama) Day, Cocoa’s great-aunt, who has powers of prophecy
• Abigail Day, Cocoa’s grandmother
• Ruby, a mysterious woman with supernatural powers
• Junior Lee, Ruby’s shiftless husband

The Novel

Mama Day, Gloria Naylor’s third novel, tells the story of Ophelia (Cocoa) Day and George Johnson, who later becomes her husband, and her initiation into the Day family. The novel is divided into three parts and opens with a brief prologue in which an anonymous, omniscient narrator sets the date as August, 1999; the rest of the novel is therefore a series of flashbacks. The prologue also tells the genealogy of the Days, the most important family of Willow Springs, an isolated island; although claimed by both South Carolina and Georgia, it is ignored and allowed to set its own laws and be independent of any outside control. Originally a slave plantation, the island was owned by Bascombe Wade, who in 1819 purchased a slave named Sapphira. He subsequently fell in love with her and took her for his wife. Four years later, after persuading him to free his slaves and deed the island to them, she killed him. That year— 1823—marks the beginning of time on Willow Springs, and all local history is dated from it.

Sapphira had a reputation as a conjure woman, a woman who could work spells and control nature. By persons unknown, she bore seven sons; the youngest, Jonah, who later took the surname “Day,” had seven sons as well, including a youngest named John-Paul. An African legend, continued in the South, holds that the eldest daughter of the seventh son of a seventh son would be unusually blessed with “conjure” powers, and this held true as the first of John-Paul’s daughters, Miranda (born in 1895), became the matriarch of Willow Springs. Because she has the gift of prophecy and the ability to work with nature to heal the sick or defeat evil, she is called “Mama Day” by the islanders. The other two daughters of John-Paul were Abigail (born in 1897) and Peace. While Mama Day never married, Abigail did and subsequently bore three girls. The middle daughter, Grace, had one daughter, Ophelia (born in 1953), who is nicknamed “Cocoa.” After her mother’s death, Mama Day and Abigail reared Cocoa.

Following this prologue, both sections of Mama Day have three voices: Cocoa and George, who conduct a dialogue about their relationship, and the omniscient narrator, who focuses on Mama Day and Abigail. Later in the novel, it is revealed that George has died and that the conversation between himself and Cocoa is spiritual, not physical. The initial section tells that Cocoa left Willow Springs in 1974 to go to New York. In the summer of 1980, however, she meets George, a design engineer who spent his childhood in an orphanage and never had a family. The contrast between these two people cannot be greater; Cocoa possesses a link with her African heritage through her family, while George seems to have no connections left with Africa because he lacks a family. The two have a stormy relationship, but there is a magnetism between them that suggests they cannot live without each other. They marry six months after they begin dating, and four years later, in 1985, they go to Willow Springs so that George can meet Mama Day and Abigail. Their crossing of the bridge from the mainland to the island ends the first section of Mama Day.

While Cocoa and George are on the island, a hurricane strikes, destroying the bridge and all telephone lines. Furthermore, because Cocoa has been falsely accused of trying to seduce Junior Lee, his wife Ruby—an obese woman who has supernatural powers—poisons Cocoa and places a spell on her. Cocoa ultimately survives, but in saving her through Mama Day’s magic, George dies. The exchange of her husband’s life for her own satisfies the curse on Cocoa. She eventually leaves Willow Springs for Charleston, South Carolina, and remarries, but she now understands the truth about her family. Cocoa sees that the line of the Days has culminated in her. Spiritually, she is both Sapphira and herself; she is her own mother as she is also Mama Day. The novel ends with her realization of her family’s heritage, which she is determined to pass on to her youngest son.

The Characters

Ophelia (Cocoa) Day, the protagonist of the novel, is the most interesting character in the book. She grows from an immature young woman into a person with exceptional personal insight. By the end of the story, she has learned not only about human nature but also about her family and herself. Her role in the novel suggests that of an “everywoman,” a character intended to stand as a microcosm for the female African American experience. Although Naylor has argued that her fiction is not didactic, it is hard not to see a moral in the lesson that Cocoa learns.

George Johnson, the most important male figure in the novel, is a well-developed character. Readers are able to see all facets of him, his flaws as well as his virtues. It is easy, however, to sympathize with him throughout the novel, because a reader learns about Willow Springs and the Day family just as he does.

Miranda (Mama) Day, who made a cameo appearance in Naylor’s second novel, Linden Hills (1985), is a marvelous creation. She can be profane and funny as she talks about sex, or sad and introspective as she reflects on her family’s many tragedies. With Mama Day, Naylor has created a character who has a life outside the novel. She comes alive and remains with readers long after the book’s covers have been shut.

Ruby, the only truly evil person in the novel, is little more than a stereotype of an African American witch. She acts in predictable ways, and her character is not developed because it does not need to be.

Critical Context

Gloria Naylor’s first novel, The Women of Brewster Place (1982), caused an immediate sensation upon its publication. Only thirty-two, she was hailed by critics as one of the most important young voices in American literature. The book, a collection of connected stories centered on one inner-city neighborhood, went on to win the American Book Award for First Novel and was adapted into a popular television film. Her next novel, also reviewed favorably, was Linden Hills (1985), which is set in a middle-class black neighborhood in which the surface calm fails to reflect the tensions underneath. A character in the story, Willa Prescott Nedeed, is the cousin of Cocoa Day, providing a link with Mama Day, Naylor’s third novel, which was also praised by critics. Her fourth novel, Bailey’s Cafe (1992), tells the stories of a group of characters who frequent a restaurant owned by a man named Bailey; the cafe also receives passing mention in Mama Day.

Each of these novels features well-developed characters. Naylor has an unusually precise knack for fleshing out a character in a few carefully chosen words, and her characters breathe and live. Naylor attributes this quality to the fact that she allows her characters the freedom to develop their own lives after she first creates them. Rather than dictate the plot, she records what happens when the characters encounter one another. For her, characters such as Mama Day and Cocoa are as real as nonfictional people.

Bibliography

Andrews, Larry R. “Black Sisterhood in Gloria Naylor’s Novels.” College Language Association Journal 33 (September, 1989): 1-25. Andrews argues that Mama Day, like Naylor’s two earlier novels, shows how crucial the sense of community is among black women. By passing this sense of community down through generations, black women can help to give themselves strength in a world so often dominated by men. This tradition, however, is threatened by the modern world, in which women forget their heritage and consequently lose a bridge with the past and a link with the future.

Boyd, Nellie. “Dominion and Proprietorship in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day and Linden Hills.” MAWA Review 5 (December, 1990): 56-58. Boyd contrasts Naylor’s second and third novels to find that they have different approaches toward a character who leads a community. In Mama Day, Boyd finds that Mama Day—the spiritual leader of Willow Springs—acts as a sort of benevolent dictator. She compares her to William Shakespeare’s Prospero in The Tempest in the sense that she serves as the “island’s conscience.”

Christian, Barbara. “Gloria Naylor’s Geography: Community, Class, and Patriarchy in The Women of Brewster Place and Linden Hills.” In Reading Black, Reading Feminist, edited by Henry L. Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian Books, 1990. Though Christian does not discuss Mama Day, she does comment at length on several subjects that appear in all of Naylor’s novels: the geographical fictional world, the nurturing sisterhood of women, and the effects of patriarchy. She also provides a helpful comparison of Naylor and Toni Morrison.

Eckard, Paula G. “The Prismatic Past in Oral History and Mama Day.” MELUS 20 (Fall, 1995): 121-135. Both Smith’s and Naylor’s novels suggest that individual lives, as well as the future, might be rewritten in the light of knowledge obtained from re-interpreting the past. Eckard argues that these works illustrate that a past encompassing the foundation of each person’s life can be discovered, drawn out, interpreted, and applied.

Kubitschek, Missy D. “Toward a New Order: Shakespeare, Morrison, and Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.” MELUS 19 (Fall, 1994): 75-90. Kubitschek explores the intertextuality of Shakespeare, Morrison, and Naylor. The story concerns the life and motherhood of a black woman who moves from rural to urban America. Kubitschek traces influences from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest and shows how they are laced throughout Naylor’s novel.

Lattin, Patricia H. “Naylor’s Engaged and Empowered Narratee.” CLA Journal 41 (June, 1998): 452-469. Naylor focuses on several different narrative voices in her novel including the use of three narrators and one narratee. In Mama Day, one of the narrators challenges the narratee to be active, pass on the story, and create a situation where the narrator and the narratee work closely on the text.

Metting, Fred. “The Possibilities of Flight: The Celebration of Our Wings in Song of Solomon, Praisesong for the Widow, and Mama Day.” Southern Folklore 55 (Fall, 1998): 145-166. Metting explores the concept of flight in the fiction of Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, and Gloria Naylor. Their works often portray slave resistance or escape, and flight is associated with wishful thinking or other means of escape. However, protective flight can take the form of psychically escaping or being absorbed by creatively constructed language.

Pearlman, Mickey. “An Interview with Gloria Naylor.” High Plains Literary Review 5 (Spring, 1990): 98-107. Suggests that Mama Day, like the two earlier novels, concerns space and memory, the created world of Willow Spring and the ties to the past. Sees the relationship between Miranda and Ophelia as one between a mother and daughter.

Saunders, James Robert. “The Ornamentation of Old Ideas: Gloria Naylor’s First Three Novels.” The Hollins Critic 27 (April, 1990): 1-11. Relates the three novels to one another. Focuses on legend and myth, calls attention to the tie between Ophelia and her namesake in Hamlet, and notes the symbolic function of names in Naylor’s fiction. Sees the power of love transcending the improbable narrative format, which involves two speakers, one of whom (George) is dead.

Storhoff, Gary. “ The Only Voice Is Your Own”: Gloria Naylor’s Revision of The Tempest.” African American Review 29 (Spring, 1995): 35-45. Many “new critics” interpret The Tempest to justify European activities such as slavery and colonialism. Naylor exposes the bankrupt patriarchal system, exclusively Protestant view of nature, and the Eurocentric construction of the “Other.”

Tucker, Lindsey. “Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.” African American Review 28 (Summer, 1994): 173-188. Focuses on the main character, Miranda Day, who encapsulates various qualities of the traditional conjure woman. Miranda’s prowess with herbal medicine distinguishes her from the hoodoo practitioner, and Naylor uses the trickster myth to establish healing and other positive influences as necessary to the conjure woman’s art so that she may benefit the community at large.

Wagner-Martin, Linda. “Quilting in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day.” Notes on Contemporary Literature 18 (November, 1988): 6-7. Argues that Ophelia’s request that Miranda and Abigail make her a quilt is a central episode in the novel. Concludes that the quilt, made with pieces of material from all the women in the family, incorporates the lives of all the women, good and bad. Ophelia must deal with choices and decide how to handle her family inheritance.