«There’s a Way to Alter the Pain»: Biblical Revision and African Tradition in the Fictional Cosmology of Gloria Naylor’s "Mama Day" and "Bailey’s Café"

Description

Assuming the role of the African American griotte of her generation, Gloria Naylor seeks to recover and remember the eroded history of female archetypes in order to overcome the pain that a patriarchal, misogynist society has caused for Black women. Through revisiting and revising Biblical master narratives and Judeo-Christian imagery, Naylor sets out to tell the whole story of a truncated history. In great detail, this book throws light on Naylor’s literary revisionism against the backdrop of a radical Black Feminist Liberation Theology and a matrifocal Africana Womanism. In an analysis that fuses the impact of residual oral narration, geo-psychic spaces, and the rediscovery of a Jungian mother pattern, it becomes clear that characters and plot symbiotically enter into the all-encompassing realm of the feminine, creative life force. It is here that Naylor carves out a living space for a new generation of African American women. Cover Acknowledgments List of Contents 1. Introduction 2. New Wine in Old Skins: Revision of Christian Mythology 2.1. Biblical Appropriation in African American Literary Context 2.2. Overview of Naylor’s Revisionist Elements 3. The Pillars of Naylor’s Fictional Cosmos 3.1. Setting the Tone 3.1.1. Bailey’s Café: Bible meets Blues 3.1.2. Mama Day: A “Lost and Ancient Song” 3.1.3. Synopsis 3.1.3.1. Reader-Text Interaction 3.1.3.2. Nommos: the Power of the Spoken Word 3.2. The Ties That Bind: Of Mothers, Virgins, and Whores 3.2.1. The Biblical Quilt 3.2.1.1. Mama Day 3.2.1.2. Bailey’s Café 3.2.2. The Mother Pattern 3.2.2.1. Mama Day 3.2.2.1.1. The Arch-mother: Sapphira 3.2.2.1.2. The Mediator: Mama Day 3.2.2.1.3. The Disciple: Cocoa 3.2.2.2. Bailey’s Café 3.2.2.2.1. Archmothers and Controlling Images 3.2.2.2.2. The Tragic Loss of Mothers 3.2.2.3. Synopsis: The “Othermothers” 3.2.3.1. The Soloists of Bailey’s Café 3.2.3.2. Mama Day’s Maternal Body 3.2.3.3. Between Culprit and Scapegoat: Negotiating the Male 3.2.3. Sexuality: The Virgin – Whore Dichotomy 3.3. Geo-psychic Spaces 3.3.1. Cosmogony 3.3.2. Spaces of “Otherness" 3.3.2.1. Home in Ruins: Negotiating the Domestic Space 3.3.2.2. Sacred Space, Secret Space 3.3.3. Synopsis: The Gendered Space 4. Telling the Whole Story 4.1. Naylor – the Griotte 4.2. Every Mother a Daughter 4.3. Naylor’s Literary Activism 4.4. Redemption in Rewriting 5. Conclusion Bibliography