The Conjure Woman’s Poetics of Poisoning in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day

Abstract

This article examines the poetics of poisoning in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day. The article traces the depiction of the conjure woman in novels written by African American female novelists in the 1980s, drawing upon the figure’s historical implications in the black canon. Although Naylor’s novel introduces a number of conjure women, this article shifts the focus from the titular protagonist, Mama Day, to the other conjurer, Ruby, who casts a poisonous spell. Ruby’s spell is grounded in African American folklore and exemplifies Naylor’s re-situation of the conjure woman in a postmodern setting.

Notes

Notes

1 In most articles on Mama Day, Ruby is mentioned in passing, if at all. There are, however, two articles that take an interest in Ruby, but each adopts a different perspective from mine. Monica Coleman’s ‘THE WORK OF YOUR OWN HANDS’ emphasizes the image of the ‘hand’ in the narrative, its religious implications, and the use of the divine power of ase by both Ruby and Mama Day, plus the use of hair by Ruby as a Bakongo spiritual rite (Coleman 2002). The other article is Lindsey Tucker’s ‘Recovering the Conjure Woman: Texts and Contexts in Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day’. Tucker examines the three conjure women in the text: Saphhira Wade, Mama Day, and Ruby. However, Ruby is not analysed in depth and the focus is on Mama Day (Tucker 1994).

2 The conjurer is not the root doctor, the witch, the mambo, the goopher doctor, the hoodoo doctor, or the voodooist. These terms are used interchangeably; however, they are not synonymous. The conjurer may be a man or a woman who practises magic to make a living, possessing the power to harm or heal. The mambo is a priestess who knows the arts of magic. The rootworker, usually a woman, manipulates magic to heal. The witch, however, is always a woman dressed in black who uses black magic for evil purposes. The hoodoo doctor uses African, European, and Native American magic. The goopher doctor is evil and his/her practices are predominantly harming and can lead to death. Voodoo, Caribbean in origin, is like a religious cult that is primarily spiritual, but uses magic occasionally (Anderson 2005).

3 Examples of such works include Herron and Bacon (1895), Puckett (1926), Bass (1930), and Whitten (1962).

4 Major novels written by black male writers in that decade include: Ishmael Reed’s The Terrible Twos (1982), and its sequel The Terrible Threes (Reed 1989); Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale (1982); John Edgar Wideman’s Sent for You Yesterday (1983); Nathaniel Mackey’s Bedouin Hornbook (1986); and Randall Kenan’s A Visitation of Spirits (1989).

5 Significant works that tackled conjuration as a black folk icon of spiritual empowerment before the 1980s include Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure Man Dies (1932); Hurston’s Jonah’s Gourd Vine (1934), Mules and Men (1935), Tell My Horse (1938), and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939); Mercedes Gilbert’s Aunt Sara Wooden God (1938); J. J. Phillips’s Mojo Hand (1966); Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970) and ‘The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff’ (1973); Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon (1977); and Ntozake Shange’s Spell#7 (1979).

6 Marie Laveau (1801?–81), the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, was a conjure woman raised to legendary status. Laveau joined in conjure rituals and liturgical dances in New Orleans’ Congo Square and St. John’s Eve festivals at Lake Pontchartrain in the mid nineteenth century. She had uncanny powers that she used for her own benefit, and sometimes for others’. Laveau appears in Hurston’s ‘Hoodoo in America’ (1931) and Mules and Men (1935). Tituba was a slave conjure woman from the late seventeenth century, among the first to be accused of witchcraft in Salem Village and face trial (1692–93). Native American or African, her origin has been controversial. Tituba confessed to meddling with the devil during her trial and was acquitted after spending one year in prison. She was appealing to many writers, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Giles Cory of the Salem Farms (1868), Arthur Miller in The Crucible (1953), Ann Petry in Tituba of Salem Village (1964), and the French novelist Maryse Condé in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1986).

7 Such characters include (among others) Anyanwu in Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed (1980), Old Wife in Toni Cade Bambara’s The Salt Eaters (1980), Indigo in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Aunt Cuney in Paule Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow (1983), Marie-Thérèse in Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby (1984), and Lena McPherson in Tina McElory Ansa’s Baby of the Family (1989).

8 The four novels are The Women of Brewster Place (1982), Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), and Bailey’s Cafe (1992). The first novel has an urban setting with a group of black women who experience life with its oppressions. The second novel uses the setting of its title, but Naylor builds her narrative upon the model of Dante’s Inferno to show how the American dream has turned into a nightmare. The last novel is set in a New York café, where the owner tells the stories of various people, including his own.

9 Puckett has been seen by some, including Hurston and Alice Walker, as a racist white folklorist. However, discarding his work, as Patrick Mullen explains, ‘would oversimplify the complexities of race in the social sciences and overlook his accomplishments as a scholar’ (Mullen 2008, 42). Limiting Puckett to the social construction of race as seen today is unfair because some of those racist paradigms were embraced by black intellectuals then. Puckett’s scholarly work retains its importance, as it preserves folk culture at a crucial time in black history and fills in some of the gaps left out by black folklorists of his age.

10 The eighteenth century in particular witnessed many cases of poisoning that were reported regularly and many slaves had to face trial for practising it. Most of those cases were intra-racial (Chireau 2006, 70).

11 Used in good and evil charms, salt’s role depends on the other ingredients and the steps taken in each spell. Anderson states that salt in conjure was mainly used for protection and re-tells the story in which a slave mixed salt with some powder to avoid his master’s blow (Anderson 2008, 78). Additionally, salt is used as an ‘old trick to get a job’ and to ‘find true love’ (Anderson 2008, 85). But salt can also be used for different ends. Hurston lists salt among the ingredients of evil spells such as ‘To Kill Hags’, ‘For Separation’, and ‘To Run Crazy’ (Hurston 1931, 321, 383, and 390).

12 The narrative of Mama Day alternates among three main voices: Cocoa and George are first-person narrators, while the voice of the people on the island is an omniscient third-person narrator, sometimes interrupted by the voice of Mama Day herself.

13 In addition to mojo there is minkisi: ‘(singular nkisi) [which] contained medicinal and/or magical ingredients, as well as a soul called a mooyo. Minkisi appear to have strongly influenced the American idea of the mojo, which may have derived its name from mooyo’ (Anderson 2008, 136). Minkisi stand between magic and religion because they contain a strong spiritual element and are believed to be inhabited by spirits.

14 Nightshade, or belladonna, plays a similar major part in poisoning in European folklore.

15 Wade Davis notes that Haitian voodooists also used Jimson weed (Datura stramonium) in their ritual practices. He explains that this plant has been associated with transitional moments in life such as ‘passage, initiation and death’ (Davis 1985, 39). The plant is used as a hallucinogen capable of inducing stupor, delusion, confusion, and even amnesia, and if used in large portions it can cause death. D. stramonium is still used today in West Africa as a poison because it is highly toxic. However, the very same plant can also be used as a cure because the atropine and scopolamine it contains relieve the symptoms of poisoning (Davis 1985, 166).

16 Walter B. Cannon’s ‘“Voodoo” Death’ was the first essay to draw attention to the psychological impact of conjure practices (Cannon 1942). Other important essays tackling the same issue are Eastwell (1982), Tinling (1967), and Wintrob (1973).

17 The same technique of conjuring can be seen in Alice Walker’s ‘The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff’. Tante Rosie, the town’s conjure woman, intimidates her victim Sarah Saddler psychologically by threatening her with voodoo and talking about the ingredients needed to cast the spell. Although Tante Rosie does nothing, Sarah’s fear causes her to break down completely, leading to her death.

18 Anyanwu in Wild Seed (Butler 1980) is immortal: she heals the sick and does harm to nobody although she can. Old Wife in The Salt Eaters (Bambara 1980) helps Minnie Ransom in curing Velma. Indigo in Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (Shange 1982) is in close touch with the spiritual world and possesses supernatural powers that she never uses in harming. Aunt Cuney in Praisesong for the Widow (Marshall 1983) uses her conjuring gifts in connecting Avey to Africa and acting as her spiritual guide. Marie-Thérèse in Tar Baby (Morrison 1984) supports Son through her supernatural abilities when everyone else fails him. Lena McPherson in Baby of the Family (Ansa 1989) has supernatural powers of vision that she never abuses to hurt others. Mama Day is the matriarch, healer, and midwife of Willow Springs.

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Yomna Saber

Yomna Saber is Associate Professor of Literature at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar and Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. She has published articles in The Journal of Lesbian Studies, The Journal of American Studies, Pacific Coast Philology, Women’s Studies, and two books: Brave to Be Involved (Peter Lang, 2010) and Gendered Masks of Liminality and Race (Peter Lang, 2017).