Themes: Cocoa's Education and Initiation into the Matriarchy
The primary theme of Mama Day is the education of Cocoa, the woman whose destiny it is to continue the line of Days. Although she leaves Willow Springs after George’s death and later remarries, in a sense she will become “Mama Day” after her great-aunt’s death. In other words, Cocoa has now gained the responsibility of self-knowledge, through which she is initiated into the matriarchy of the family. Symbolizing this responsibility is an intricate wedding quilt that Mama Day makes for Cocoa. The quilt is made from fragments of cloth from all of the female Days, from Sapphira through Cocoa herself, and is intended to give her a tangible object from which to draw strength. The pages explaining the making of the quilt, as well as the pages showing Cocoa’s reaction to it, are central to the novel.
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