SOURCE: Kubitschek, Missy Dehn. “Toward a New Order: Shakespeare, Morrison, and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day.” MELUS 19, no. 3 (fall 1994): 75–91.

In the following essay, Kubitschek explores the connections between Naylor's Mama Day and the works of Toni Morrison and William Shakespeare.

In 1987, Barbara Christian asserted that important African-American literature is suffering critical neglect by an academy preoccupied with developing literary theory; her specific examples included the works of Frances Harper, Alice Walker (with the exception of The Color Purple), and Gloria Naylor. Since then, Hazel Carby's excellent The Reconstruction of Womanhood has discussed Harper, but no major work has emerged to engage Naylor's novels. To some degree, the problem may lie in the precursor to extended critical interpretation, reviews.

The major reviews of Naylor's 1988 novel, Mama Day, refuse in crucial ways to grant the novel's donnée, even when they are generally positive. To some extent, these judgments stem from...