With a new introduction by Robert Jones, Jr, author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets
‘Gloria Naylor is a brilliant word-worker and a breathtaking story-teller. Mama Day is her masterpiece’ Tayari Jones
‘A sweeping, ambitious, gorgeous novel – takes you by the throat and refuses to let go. Mama Day is a stone-cold masterpiece’ Carmen Maria Machado
Between Georgia and South Carolina is an island you won’t find on any map. Only a single wooden bridge connects it to the world. In Willow Springs people still honour their ancestors, who arrived as slaves back in the time of Sapphira Wade, the ‘true conjure woman’ who set them all free.
It is said that Mama Day has inherited Sapphira’s power. She is a healer whose hands have delivered almost every soul on the island – and rumour has it that she can summon lightning storms. When Cocoa, her great-niece, returns to Willow Springs from New York, she brings her husband, George. But can Mama Day save them from the island’s darker powers?
Mama Day is a powerful story of love, belonging, magic and inheritance.
‘One of my favourite novels of all time. Naylor’s skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love – which is to say, life – is extraordinary’ Robert Jones, Jr
‘Gloria Naylor’s exceptional books are deftly acute examinations of the beauty and tenacity of Black lives’ Irenosen Okojie
‘Gloria Naylor is a brilliant word-worker and a breathtaking story-teller. Mama Day is her masterpiece’ Tayari Jones
‘A sweeping, ambitious, gorgeous novel – takes you by the throat and refuses to let go. Mama Day is a stone-cold masterpiece’ Carmen Maria Machado
Between Georgia and South Carolina is an island you won’t find on any map. Only a single wooden bridge connects it to the world. In Willow Springs people still honour their ancestors, who arrived as slaves back in the time of Sapphira Wade, the ‘true conjure woman’ who set them all free.
It is said that Mama Day has inherited Sapphira’s power. She is a healer whose hands have delivered almost every soul on the island – and rumour has it that she can summon lightning storms. When Cocoa, her great-niece, returns to Willow Springs from New York, she brings her husband, George. But can Mama Day save them from the island’s darker powers?
Mama Day is a powerful story of love, belonging, magic and inheritance.
‘One of my favourite novels of all time. Naylor’s skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love – which is to say, life – is extraordinary’ Robert Jones, Jr
‘Gloria Naylor’s exceptional books are deftly acute examinations of the beauty and tenacity of Black lives’ Irenosen Okojie
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Reviews
One is quickly beguiled . . . so gracefully does Naylor fuse together the epic and the naturalistic, the magical and the real
What joy to find a novel that rewrites Prospero as a woman-and an extraordinarily powerful woman at that . . . Mama Day's power is as mysterious as Prospero's, but her motives are clear: protect those she loves, even if they won't listen to her about needing that protection. Told in richly textured language, sexy and scary and embracing of human flaws, Mama Day reimagines The Tempest as a story of matriarchal power.
This is a wonderful novel, full of spirit and sass and wisdom, and completely realized
The novel's strength and passion come through in the rich detail of its voices - of lives lived, boundaries crossed, alliances forged or broken. Naylor creates a story as vivid as the incantatory prose she uses to tell it. We are made to care so much about the inhabitants of Willow Springs - most of all, its diminutive power-broker Mama Day - that one winces when she drops the angel-food cake pan; healers of this stature shouldn't have bad days
A sweeping, ambitious, gorgeous novel - takes you by the throat and refuses to let go. Mama Day is a stone-cold masterpiece
Gloria Naylor is a brilliant word-worker and a breathtaking story-teller. Mama Day is her masterpiece
Irrefutably, Gloria Naylor was one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. Every single one of her works was masterful, crafted with the kind of rare artistic brilliance that places her in extremely limited company. She is likely best known for her National Book Award-winning debut work, The Women of Brewster Place, but that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Whether the divine Bailey's Cafe, the haunting Linden Hills, or the exquisite Mama Day (one of my favorite novels of all-time), Naylor's skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love-which is to say, life-is extraordinary. There is something both mundane and cosmic about her writing that captures the human condition in a way that perhaps no other writer did or will. Her work is, for me, a shout, a praise song, a hosanna, a hallelujah, a Black fist in the air; àse! She holds a hallowed place in the canon, and also in hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits. She was one of the blessed ones
When you read Mama Day, and surely you will read it, 'surrender' to it. Don't worry about finding the plot. Let the plot find you. The different voices are beautifully realized ... Naylor has a dazzling sense of humour, rich comic observation and that indefinable quality we call 'heart'.
Resonates with genuine excitement...a big, strong admirable novel
