Gloria Naylor and “The Other Place” of Black Feminism

Abstract

Gloria Naylor and “The Other Place” of Black Feminism Kiana T. Murphy (bio) Gloria Naylor: Other Places, curated by Suzanne Edwards, Mary Foltz, and Mark Wonsidler, September 13, 2021–May 27, 2022, Dubois Gallery, Maginnes Hall, Lehigh University. In Gloria Naylor’s novel Mama Day (1988), the matriarchal figure Miranda (Mama Day) goes up to the attic to fix a leak in an old, tattered house—a home resting on a former plantation that has now been in the Day family for many decades and subsequently named “the other place.” In search of a remedy to cure her great-niece Ophelia (nicknamed Cocoa by the Day family), Mama Day returns to “the other place” in search of ancestral guidance. While in the attic, Mama Day starts to remember stories of her family living in the house, and in her process of remembering she eyes an object in the darkness: She’s pushing and nailing the matting up into a small corner when she spies the ledger. Black leather binding, long and narrow, bent almost in two from being jammed into the point of the roof. That had to be hidden there on purpose. Miranda tries to wedge it out and the cover practically falls apart in her hands. The pages are swollen and discolored from dampness. She couldn’t read it in this light anyway, even if the ink wasn’t all run together. . . . In the bright light of the bedroom, there’s nothing to be read in it. Too old. Too long gone. She finds a slip of paper in the back that tells her just how old. Tuesday, 3rd Day August, then a 1 and a half of what must be an 8, with the rest of the date faded away. Sold to Mister Bascombe Wade of Willow Springs, one negress answering to the name of Sa . . . Water damage done removed the remainder of that line with the yellowish and blackened stains spreading down and taking out most of the others as well: Law . . . knowledge . . . witness . . . inflicted . . . nurse. It’s all she can pick out until she gets to the bottom for the final words: Conditions . . . tender . . . kind.1 Although readers are given the full text of the ledger before the novel begins, it is significant that the ledger is indecipherable in the hands of Mama Day. Crumbling before her, the ledger represents the violent and fractured history of slavery. For Mama Day, however, this object also becomes an opening door, as she endlessly tries to figure out the name of her ancestor, knowing that calling [End Page 453] out to her will be the ancestral connection needed to help her great-niece recover from her illness. Throughout her novels, Naylor consistently imagines this contradiction of the archives as a site of memory—characters find ledgers, childhood toys, diaries, cookbooks, and other ephemeral objects that activate and fragment both individual and communal remembrance. Sometimes the objects are passed down or found in basements or community spaces, which become geographic and cultural locations that also serve as archival maps for generations to come. The exhibit “Gloria Naylor: Other Places,” on display from September 13, 2021, to May 7, 2022, not only centers the range of spatial locations that populate Naylor’s novels but also highlights the significance of the archive for her narrative retellings. A poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and screenwriter, Naylor was born in New York City by way of Mississippi, where her parents, Alberta McAlpin and Roosevelt Naylor, were both from sharecropping families. She gained prominence as a writer with the publication of her debut novel, The Women of Brewster Place (1982), which won a National Book Award and was later adapted by Oprah Winfrey into a miniseries. Naylor would go on to publish several novels throughout her career: Linden Hills (1985), Mama Day (1988), Bailey’s Café (1992), The Men of Brewster Place (1998), and 1996 (2004). At the beginning of the exhibit, the viewer is pulled immediately into the universe of a prolific writer: in the background of the introductory panel is an enlarged photograph of a jubilant Naylor, head tilted back midlaugh, in front of fully stocked bookshelves. Although the exhibit’s structure mirrors...