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Mama Day By Gloria Naylor ( Vintage )
Release Date: 1989-04-23
Average Customer Rating:
List Price: $13.95
Price: $11.16
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Product Description
On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island's darker forces. A powerful generational saga at once tender and suspenseful, overflowing with magic and common sense.
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 All Time Favorite Book
Every few years I reread this book because it's so enjoyable and beautiful. It's been a few years since I've read it and know it's time again.
The heroes, protagonists and other characters thrown into the story are wonderful. Ms. Naylor's mythology about the sea island community is inventive, and the islanders quirky, yet she infused her characters with realistic concerns that are commonplace.
Throughout the book there was romance, suspense and mysticism. She intertwined all the different stories smoothly and the results are impeccable.
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 Interesting...confusing
I'm still not sure how I felt about this book. There were some interesting literary references...although it seemed like they may have been too much to link with the multiple story lines. Connections were confusing and all over the place.
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Left With A Blank Stare - Huh?! ( jsunmola2 )
I have scanned quickly over all the positive reviews, and I feel sort of out of sorts giving this book a three star. Y'all I just did not get the gist of the story.
I simply did not like the Cocoa/Ophelia character. She was so neurotic, just annoying as hell. I had no sympathy for her. I loved George though. He was such a lovely and easy going man. I can't understand why he put with her craziness.
Willow Springs had some interesting characters. Dr. Buzzard appealed to me. Benice, Cocoa's friend, seemed a little weak minded and strange.
I still don't know what led to the two deaths. What really happened to Little Caesar? I have absolutely no idea what really transpired. I know that Ruby hoodooed Cocoa, because she thought Cocoa wanted her useless man. However, I am not sure of why George had to suffer for it in the end.
I did not feel like there was enough history to explain why the past affected the present so.
Y'all I just did not get it. I don't know. Maybe this is one of those books you have to read more than twice to get it. I was annoyed when I read the last words - just annoyed and a little depressed at the outcome of the story.
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Couldn't put it down ( misspatsimae )
I read this book way back in the summer of 1988, when I was awaiting the birth of my daughter. It was the perfect novel to read during such a hot summer, during which the temperatures in the Midwest were similar to the hottest temps in the South. I found it fascinating that the practice of voodoo and herbal medicine as portrayed in the novel had survived through so many generations. The characters were strong and memorable. I ran across this book again while browsing in the library, and I am thinking about recommending it for the book club where I work.
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You'll be happy that you had giving the time to read this book. ( jen-jay )
I tell you a good book is one of those books that you're actually sad when it's over. That was "Mama Day" for me.
What many reviewers stated in here is true, Gloria Naylor is a master storyteller. Her characters are vividly drawn, her humor is by turns laugh-out-load funny or subtlety sarcastic, and her prose quite often caused this reader to sit back and savor the sheer creativity, beauty and freshness of the images which she creates.
I've read a lot of books by the current crop of black authors but nothing has touched me and made me fall totally in love with a book like Mama Day. This book was brilliant and I couldn't put it down until it was over.
In this book Willow Springs is a sparsely populated sea island just off America's southeastern coast whose small black community is dominated by the elderly matriarch, Miranda ``Mama'' Day. When Mama Day's great-niece, Cocoa, marries, she returns to Willow Springs with her husband for an extended visit. Once there, strange forces both natural and supernatural work to separate the couple. After visiting the menacing Ruby, a local root doctor, Cocoa becomes dangerously ill, and the struggle for her life showcases Naylor's talent for descriptive prose. Though the novel as a whole fairly breathes with life, it is marred by the unintentionally comic death of a major character, which is attacked by a vicious chicken.
This is a masterpiece of contemporary literature, a pleasure to experience. "Mama Day" is an entertaining and original look at family, community, and love. With a little voodoo sprinkled in for good measure.
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