Mama Day

Throughout Mama Day, Naylor explores the distinction between body and mind. For example, in an attempt to convince him to help her cure Cocoa, Miranda tells George that “since she’s suffering from something more than the flesh, I can’t do a thing without you” (484). The connection between the body and mind appears earlier in this section, too. When George and Miranda are out walking in the woods and come across the grave of Bascombe Wade, Miranda tells George that Wade “fell under the spell of a woman he owned—only in body, not in mind” (340). The novel constantly asks readers to think about people’s personal identities. The novel makes it clear that everyone is a combination of their past and their present. The motif of body and mind is a way of underscoring this theme: a person’s body is how they represent themselves and establish our identities in the present. Conversely, the mind holds a person’s history, beliefs, ideas, and attitudes. Together, they constitute a person’s whole identity and cannot be separated. Cocoa’s sickness is a literal affliction of her body, but it also represents a poisoning of her mind, a forgetting of who she is and where she comes from. It falls on Miranda and George—a combination of her past and present—to put a stop to the decay.

Even though Cocoa recovers from the poison, George succumbs to a heart attack in his efforts to retrieve a cure from Miranda’s hen house. However, one could argue that it is Willow Springs itself which kills George or, perhaps more accurately, that George’s death is a result of his inability to understand the rhythm and ritual of the town. Throughout the novel, Miranda reiterates the idea that people find what they want to find. For example, in her conversation with Abigail about Bernice and her fertility pills, Miranda says, “Bernice is gonna believe they are what I tell her they are—magic seeds. And the only magic is that what she believes they are, they’re gonna become” (163). Similarly, she later expresses doubt that George will be willing to commit to her rituals: “A mile was a lot to travel when even one step becomes too much on a road you ain’t ready to take” (470). Perhaps George fails to find anything in the hen house because there is nothing there for him to find: because he is unwilling to genuinely believe in the possibility of an illogical solution to his problem, he comes out empty-handed. George’s death is a result of his stubborn adherence to “logical explanations.” Even when confronted with the looming death of Cocoa, George dismisses Miranda’s rituals as “mumbo-jumbo” (486). Although he eventually relents and follows Miranda’s instructions, it is not in earnest, and so there is nothing for him to bring back.

Over the next few years, much changes for Cocoa: after grieving for George, she moves to Charleston, remarries, and has two sons. However, the novel makes one last statement: that despite these changes, her history—including her time with George—will always remain a part of her. When Cocoa falls ill, Miranda tells George, “I came to tell you not to worry: whatever roads take her from here, they’ll always lead her back to you” (507). Cocoa echoes this sentiment, saying, “You’re never free from such a loss. It sits permanently in your middle, but it gets less weighty as time goes on and becomes endurable” (507). The novel reiterates that a person’s personal history—both the good and the bad parts—remain a permanent part their identity. The past might be gone, but that does not—and should not—mean that we should forget it. In fact, Naylor argues that only by embracing the past can a person be wholly and completely themselves.