Slavery In Naylor's Mama Day

Mama Day tells the story of the descendants of a black slave woman named Sapphira Wade and is focusing primarily on their heritage and identity. I believe, the author is omitting the spouses of the slave’s descendants from the family tree, because she focuses on the ancestral belonging and cultural heritage of Sapphira’s children and grandchildren only.

The novel starts with two documents, a family tree showing Sapphira Wade’s descendants and a bill of sell, which help frame the book within the history and black slavery. Naylor’s inclusion of the bill of sale gives the audience the first indication that the novel is a discourse on slavery. A segment of the bill of sale refers to “Sapphira is half prime, inflicted with sullenness and entertains a bilious nature, having resisted under reasonable chastisement the performance of field or domestic labour” (Naylor, p.2). The reader witnesses the power of the language to conceal the truth and hide the horrors of slavery.

At first look we see ordinary women with extraordinary ability to change the lives of the people around them. Mama (Miranda) Day is a literal descendant of Sapphira and her spiritual reincarnation. She is the midwife, doctor and priestess to the people of Willow Springs. Mama Day is a person with strong convictions and true sense of the world around her. She is respected, loved deeply by the family and even feared by her community, because of her remedies and cures. Mama Day with her ability to heal and seer is a vivid example of her predecessor’s heritage and traditions, something that all inhabitants in Willow Spring cherish and treasure.

In conclusion, if the bill of sale represents a justification for black slavery, the story of Sappira Wade and her descendants counters this enslavement of black women, by presenting portraits of African-American women and their desire of freedom and