Mama Day Essay | Critical Essay #1

Mama Day Critical Essay #1

Dougherty is a Ph.D candidate at Tufts University In the following essay, she explores issues of culture and history in Mama Day.

Mama Day is set on two islands, the island of Manhattan and the island of Willow Springs, which lies off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina but is proudly independent of both. Manhattan represents a place where cultures collide, while Willow Springs is culturally homogenous, home to a group of African-American residents who claim a conjure woman as their ancestor. The three differing perspectives of the novel, those of George, Cocoa, and what Vincent Odamtten identifies as the voice "of the island of Willow Springs, an ancestral choral voice," reflect the differences in each voice's cultural background and history as well as the differences among the past, the present, and the future. The narrative trajectory of the novel is one that honors the shared African-American identity...
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