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Summary Of Mama Day By Gloria Naylor

959 Words4 Pages

During slavery many blacks died for various reasons and when someone would die there would be some type of proper ceremony and burial given to that person by other slaves on the plantation. Since slaves did not physically have much, the possibility of having a fancy grave marker when you died was basically impossible. This means that the slaves had to go back to their roots and come up with ways to memorialize the death of their peers by using what they had and what they knew. At Hobcaw Barony plantation in Georgetown County, South Carolina slaves used basic objects to help with grave-marking. In Mama Day by Gloria Naylor the people on this island had a cemetery full of dead relatives and their old traditions go so far back in time that it …show more content…

Wade bought a black women named Sapphira in 1819. Sapphira and Wade fell in love and Sapphira convinced him to free all of his slaves and leave all of Willow Springs to her family. Since willow Springs is off the east coast right on the border line of Georgia and South Carolina, no state could claim ownership of the land since the only thing that connected them was bridge built by the people of Willow Springs. Even though Mama Day is set in a much more recent time, the 1980s, then slavery they still hold true to old traditions, folk rituals for healing, and some type of witchcraft. Throughout the story, the Day’s suffered from many tragic deaths and since the Day’s family bloodline began at Willow Springs there is a cemetery filled with a lot of their dead relatives. The cemetery in Mama Day is referred to as “the other place” throughout the entire …show more content…

With all of the slaves that were on the plantation it is interesting that they found twenty-eight marked graves. They found that these people were planting yucca and saw palmetto plants and they were placing shells and glassware on graves as well as personal items belonging to the deceased which show that cultural influences were just as significant in the determination of the cemetery landscape. The archaeologist also believed that the broken glassware is simply placed on the graves as a way to keep evil spirits away or to break the chain of death in the

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