African American Literature Gloria Naylor s Mama Day Fragmentation of female identity Willow Springs is land of Draws on african and speakerly tradition It would be nearly impossible to look at the novel from a scholarly pov Naylor lived in a place very similar place to Willow Springs while writing it There are three prefatory documents bill of sale for a slave map and in this similar to Douglass 1845 Narrative Takes place on a GA SC coast island called Willow Springs Reema s Boy is born on the island goes to college and comes back a socially distant individual He wants to put Willow Springs on the map but he can t see that it is already on the map He is very literal minded and does not understand The Narrator s voice is an unnamed narrator Sapphira Wade is larger than life mother gure She married a white man and then smothered stabbed and poised him She is an historical and mythical gure Sapphira Wade is a kind of bitch as some might say She won t exist in the slave trade she will create her own existence Baskin Wade died trying to control Sapphira Linguistics are a chief way of analyzing black literature repetition and variation call and response black canonical texts namely Morrison s Bluest Eye Saphira s behavior is similar to Douglass the preforatory documents magic mysticism and the supernatural african cosmology indebtedness like in Sula also folklore not only black texts but also Shakespeare and the Bible The prefatory documents the map willow springs exists in between SC and GA its liminal the genealogy Saphira Wade is the historical matriarch of the island this document serves to hint on the bible signi cance in the story the rst generation are old testament names while the next generation are new testament names the next two generations are female names the last names are metaphysical the movement of gender male to gender female to metaphysical dominant societies the bill of sale supposedly af rms Saphira to Baskin but it becomes clear that nobody owns Saphira Wade Naylor subverts notions of time order etc This is the africanist worldview Pg 161 time don t crawl and time don t here we just let it lie quote last paragraph into next page the summer we crossed over that bridge is the summer we crossed over Naylor s disregard of time brings us into the text She attempts to remove herself from the novel so that the characters interact with us directly Pg 48 home socks heals of shoes passage Pg 49 home its being new and old all being rolled into one Alternating points of view there are the natural inhabitants who resist encroaching white commercialization Coca is raised in Willow Spring it is agrarian and a foil to NYC Coco goes to Atlanta and then later to NYC Her migration away over the bridge She suffers from DuBois double consciousness Andrew George is an engineer raised in the city He and coco seem to be displaced Mrs Jackson tells George and other boys that only the present has merit Unlike in Narrative movement away from rural life and to the city is seen as a bad thing it hurts coco where as it saved Douglass Coca is a lighter complexion just like Douglass Just as coco s two identities black and white reconcile in Willow Spring home can be de ned as the place where broken things mend Coming home organizes the fragmentation of growing up and developing often in traveling away from home Multiple books one story Naylor wrote 4 books to tell one story indirectly i e there are multiple plots of which Mama Day is 3 There is an intertextual relationship between the books Why is Mama Day the title Character she is a mediating gure between spiritual realm and the secular physical realm she is the current as opposed to traditional Saphira matriarch of the community who mid wifed most of the people on Willow Springs Crossing over is a loaded term Can be physical or spiritual Can be reference to an initiation such as in a sorority frat It can also refer to death Aje is woman s power a Nigerian word for a woman like Sapphira How should we see Sapphira Wade she is Naylor s privilege of a godly female character in Sapphira as opposed to a male god in the old testament Erzulie lover of mirror s is an afro carribean mother gure depicted traditionally in three ways 1 Freda french white biscuit cream 2 Dantor brown knife bearer satin black 3 Ge Rouge medium complextion angry avenger roses red georgia clay Whenever someone tries to control someone else the former loses Andrews B Wade Trying to control women destroys men as with Baskin and Sapphira Sapphira is AJE and ERZULI The interconnectedness of Mama Day and Sapphira and then Coco and Mama Day gives them all the greater powers Coco s problem is she looses that AJE by taking to western thought Conjuring in Mama Day Ruby is jealous and frustrated of other women and Junior Lee The issue of chapterlessness this serves to replicate the nature of an african worldview where there is no difference between past present and future reveals indebtedness to african cosmology Part II of the novel brings Coco s two identities together the city life and willow springs life develops George s and Coco s relationship in George s sacri ce George is successful in his attempt to save Coco George and Coco s relationship re ect on Sapphira and Bascombe Wade s relationship Pg 294 295 Reference to hands I can do more things with these hands than most folks dream of it appears that Mama Day links George and Coco by sending him to the NorthWest corner of the chicken coup to get a chicken with his hands But because he cannot be rid of his western thought and so he dies Therefore Mama Day plays the Papa Legba role but as a new world female version George s death is complex and otherworldly and so is Coco s recovery Coco is fragmented due to double consciousness her s being a split between white Norwegian Bascombe identity and a black Sapphira identity Coco has a complex identity three names Coco Ophelia Baby Girl that devices her She is like Sapphira and is only whole in Willow Springs when Mama Day brings her together Tender and Kind on Coco s Faded Bill of Sale discovery suggests possibility of tenderness in Sapphira and Bascombe s relationship this is Naylor s way of suggesting a relationship of anti oppression between male and female evidenced in George and Coco George s Death Mama Day sending george to coup knowing he would die isn t evil on Maranda s part Instead she saves George by giving him longevity against his western thought and saving Coco This