(no subject)

[skygiants]

The main result of picking up Gloria Naylor's Mama Day while in the middle of a Tiffany Aching reread is that it made me realize right away that the title character is basically a Discworld witch. Mama Day is older than she looks, and exactly as cranky as she looks, and matriarch to a whole island; in times of great need she does things that might be magic, that probably are magic, but for the most part it's the things she does that aren't magic but are just plain practicality and common sense and doing what need to be done that matter most. (She is a master of headology.) She is wonderful. The community she dominates is wonderful too - Willow Springs is an island just off the coast of two states and therefore not officially a part of either of them, a former plantation whose inhabitants were freed and deeded the land somewhere back in a legend, the details of which nobody quite knows except that it involved Mama Day's own great-grandmother being awesomer than everyone. What this means is that Gloria Naylor gets to write a book set in the 1980's in which a black community has cheerfully and independently flourished for nearly two hundred years without worrying much at all about institutionalized oppression, a book with nearly no white people in it at all, and you can tell she is enjoying it immensely. These are the things about the book I loved.

The things about the book I did not love involve, uh, the relationship that the main plot centered around. It starts off well - Ophelia-called-Cocoa, Mama Day's great-niece, has gone off to be a career woman in New York (the bits from her perspective are first-person with this fantastic jaded astute voice) and she meets George, a serious intellectual dude with a strong work ethic who is her total opposite but is of course perfect for her, and here is where I run into trouble. I wanted to like George. I really did! From the outside he's awesome! He reads Shakespeare, and he calls Cocoa on her casual stereotyping (there's this awesome conversation where Cocoa is going on about how the bagels are in power but pretty soon the spareribs or oles are going to take over, and he stops and goes "Why are people food to you?") and he's invested in getting to know all the weird little places around New York and you guys know that that is something I believe in. But the problem is that he's so smug about all this! I really, really wish we never saw him in his own POV, but alas we do, and in his POV he's so self-righteously insufferable that I just want to tell him to get off my side. Also, he is a textbook Nice Guy - there's a whole page where he talks about all the hot girls who wouldn't look twice at him back in college because he was so dull, and now he's totally successful and too bad you were too jaded and shallow to notice, ladies! I mean, I quote: "Often I had wanted to go over and shake some silk-clad shoulder who thought she was righteously justified in spreading the tired old gospel about not being able to meet good black men. She had met me." Seriously, George? I'm not saying Cocoa is perfect, but after they get together, it's her who changes herself and her whole lifestyle while he goes on about how interesting it is to live with a woman, oh what a mysterious and irrational being! MY LEAST FAVORITE STEREOTYPE. Even after they're married (not a spoiler, this is revealed on page one) it takes him like FOUR YEARS to get around to going back to Willow Springs and meeting her family, the most important people in her life, because he can't miss football season. And it is presented as an unfairness in her to be upset by this. (At this point I was frustrated not just because of George being a jerk but also because the back cover told me the plot wouldn't start happening until they got there. COME ON, GEORGE, HAVE PITY ON US. Plot >>>> football!)

. . . I did not mean to rant this long, and I do think this book is worth reading, for the fantastic rich voice and for Willow Springs and for Mama Day and for Cocoa, for all the relationships among strong women. But man, I just kind of wanted to surgically remove George from the narrative.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Gosh, I read a bunch of Gloria Naylor for a college class, I should pick those off the shelf and see what I think now, because I remember almost nothing about them (I do have a vague recollection of disliking George from what you say, though => ).

[skygiants]

I want to try more Gloria Naylor, because I like her writing! I just apparently do not like her idea of how an ideal relationship should look, or what makes for a paragon of a dude. (The worst part I think is how Cocoa's entire family thinks George is AMAZING. There is so much narrative validation for his behavior! MUCH TOO MUCH.)

[kate_nepveu]

Oh dear.

That would definitely be a problem.

[saramily]

Oh, man. This sounds really really interesting but I'm bouncing especially hard off of Nice Guy relationships right now and narrative validation of such? Blergh.

I'll put it on the "to be read later (maybe)" list for the women and the idea of Willow Springs.

[skygiants]

Hahaha well, this is one I actually own (having picked it up at a Housing Works bargain sale) and would not mind giving away, so if you want to have it around the house - because what you need is MORE BOOKS you may not ever want to read, clearly - let me know and I'll pass it off this summer!

[happydork]

"Often I had wanted to go over and shake some silk-clad shoulder who thought she was righteously justified in spreading the tired old gospel about not being able to meet good black men. She had met me."

*rolls eyes so hard* Apart from George, this sounds like a great book -- I'll look out for it.

[skygiants]

IN-TEXT ITALICS EVEN. Seriously, who thinks that! (I guess too many dudes think that. >.<)

But other than George it definitely is worth looking out for! Or for more Gloria Naylor in general, I would imagine.