Mama Day

The Culture of Willow Springs; Disregard at One's Own Expense Gloria Naylor's book Mama Day is an intricately woven story of love and loss on the mystical island of Willow Springs. Willow Springs is a fictitious island off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina connected to the mainland physically and metaphorically by a rickety handmade bridge. It is governed by its unique culture which is loosely based on the African slave culture Gullah. The culture is best defined by…...

Situations are repetitive. People from all walks of life experience the same struggles and attempt to conquer the same challenges. The narrative does not change. The interesting aspect is the undertaker, the one going through a specific journey. People are different, from birth by genetics but more importantly by the surroundings that mold them. Place of origin and specific backgrounds shape the way people act and see the world. This could not be more true for main characters in Mama…...

Gloria Naylor's 1988 novel Mama Day rests in the tension between the physicality of objects and the wonder of the supernatural. In many ways, it is this tension that makes the novel such an engaging exercise for students. In many ways, the novel verges at time on the terror of the sublime as readers fear being overwhelmed by the supernatural acts we witness. After all, we "watch” in disbelief as Mama Day performs a fertility ritual, as Ruby braids poison…...

The entire structure of Mama Day is fitting to the telling of multiple love stories entertwined. Like the most heartfelt episode of Seinfeld ever Gloria Naylor doesn t tell a love story, but rather lays out in detail the events of everyday life for all of the central characters. In the process the love stories of the characters are all told at once. The most obvious example is the relationship between George and Cocoa (arguably the main love story). Through…...

In her essay “The Council of Pecans” from Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (2013), Kimberly Wall Kimmerer introduces the reader to a community of pecan trees that do not crop annually but at unpredictable intervals. This “boom and bust cycle” (15) is triggered by cues from the environment that include seasonal changes, predation patterns, and survival instincts. The trees do not adhere to a conception of time that philosopher Karen Barad describes as “a…...