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I made the mistake of not writing my review immediately after finishing this book, nor right after book club -- so a full month later, let's see how much I can remember!

Mama Day is a lovely little jaunt of magical realism, set between New York City and a small, sleepy island town off the coast of Georgia/South Carolina. The narrative trades off between two alternating narrators, a black woman and black man dissecting their history and their relationship. The eponymous "Mama Day" is the narrator's inimitable folklorish grand-aunt, who presides over the island as their local elder and sort-of-sorceress.

Cocoa and George's voices & the path of their courtship was what drew my attention the most -- the depiction of being a twenty-something woman lost in the hustle & bustle of NYC and struggling to form meaningful connections is really, really relatable, despite my reading this 29 years after publication. Plus I just really enjoyed it as an in-depth character study: the contrast between the narrators, their personalities and upbringing, and how they struggle to make room for each other in their lives.

It lost me a bit towards the end, as the pacing falters a bit when the real 'conflict' of the novel actually begins so so so close to the finish. There's a devastating ending that I didn't foresee -- despite the fact that looking back, you were told about it right up front in the prologue, and yet somehow half of the people in bookclub (myself included!) didn't notice it.

In addition to being a character study, I'd say it's all about family & identity & heritage, North vs. South, the urban vs. the rural, having a solid oral history versus being a blank slate. The book is billed as "rework[ing] elements of Shakespeare's The Tempest", but tbh that connection is tenuous; there are the vaguest tips of the hat to Shakespeare (Cocoa's real name is Ophelia; George likes reading King Lear; there is a storm), but it's more like window dressing than an actual retelling. The real meat is the concept of home, and relationships & how they work or don't, and the power of faith and credulity: clap your hands if you believe in fairies; don't look back lest you turn into a pillar of salt; and here, follow Mama Day's instructions.

Favourite quotes below the cut:
(view spoiler)[And this show gave the audience a chance to speak, and what they had to say was always of more interest to her than the people on the stage who were running off at the mouth about being male strippers, lesbian nuns, or talking about some new book they just wrote, showing folks who lived in apartments how to turn their bathrooms into fallout shelters. On all of these "fascinating topics" she had one opinion and that could be summed up in two words: white folks. And when they found a colored somebody to act the fool -- like the man from New Jersey, holding up a snapshot of his cousin posing with a family of Martians -- she expanded it to three words: honorary white folks.

***

Home. It's being new and old all rolled into one. Measuring your new against old friends, old ways, old places. Knowing that as long as the old survives, you can keep changing as much as you want without the nightmare of waking up to a total stranger.

***

You and those just like you who had gone there following a myth: you've got to be fast, and you've got to be fierce, because isn't everybody running? You all made the same mistake. We were running -- but toward home or toward jobs, rushing through the streets, because we knew what you couldn't possibly, with your cloistered arrogance: New York wasn't on those Manhattan sidewalks, just the New Yorkers.

***

I don't know exactly when it changed for me -- my wanting you to see New York, and then my just wanting to see you. Not being able to pinpoint the time or reason of that transformation made me uncomfortable. But one Saturday morning you were a little late at the meeting place we'd picked out, and the thought of your not coming bothered me.

***

Although I never asked, I wanted to know more about where you'd come from, and what it was like growing up there. It should have been a warning sign -- my increasing curiosity about the way you spent your life before and after you got off the train at Ninety-sixth Street. If it was a warning, I didn't listen. Or maybe, I didn't want to listen.

But now I heard what was happening loud and clear. When you finally rounded the corner after my half-hour wait, my heart started to beat just a tiny bit faster.

***

I woke up one morning, sometime in early November, and realized I wanted to be with you for the rest of my life. Whether I could or not was seriously open to question, but the desire was certainly there. From a child I had to accept that some things you may want aren't meant for you -- or worse, not even good for you. I had wanted to know my parents, I had wanted to be able to take part in sports. But none of that was to happen because of reasons beyond my control, and being carefully trained not to let that upset me, I made the best of it. The life I had, I had, and what I could do, that was that. So the revelation about you that day wasn't earth shattering -- I had my usual shave and shower, fixed a bowl of oatmeal, and went on to work -- it was simply another item in a long list of things I had wanted.

***

You offered [Bernice] a possible ally and my stomach took a nose dive as soon as the words were out of her mouth: "My own mama never gave me no outside name but the one I was born with. And your mama didn't either, did she, George?" I regretted having never told her the whole truth. But how could I reach cab drivers, storekeepers, news commentators, a dozen waitresses -- all of whom were likely, through casual remarks, to freeze the muscles in the lower part of your jaw? Put that cold light in your eyes. When I finally made the connection, it was in the realm just beneath thought. To have thought it would be too ugly and so how to speak about the unthinkable? We held this secret between us that we couldn't even reveal to ourselves. (hide spoiler)]