Mama Day Themes

Mama Day Themes

Supernatural

Mama Day is imbued with supernatural occurrences. As part of the hoodoo religion they have inherited from their slave ancestors, the inhabitants of Willow Springs believe in the supernatural. Near the end of the novel, readers learn that George, one of the narrators, has been dead for fourteen years, and that Cocoa speaks to him regularly.

But it is Mama Day who embodies the supernatural. She possesses a "gift" that she inherited from her great-grandmother, the slave Sapphira Wade. According to Willow Springs legend, Sapphira was a "conjure woman" who "could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of the lightning to start the kindling going under the medicine pot.... She turned the moon into salve, the stars into swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down...
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