SOURCE: Eckard, Paula Gallant. “The Prismatic Past in Oral History and Mama Day.” MELUS 20, no. 3 (fall 1995): 121–35.

In the following essay, Eckard examines how Naylor's Mama Day and Lee Smith's Oral History both demonstrate ways in which re-examining one's past can lead to a better understanding of the future.

The past exerts a distinct and powerful influence in most of southern fiction. This is no less true in the works of contemporary women writers who are southern themselves or whose works fall in the realm of southern fiction. In the hands of Lee Smith and Gloria Naylor, the past becomes a multi-dimensional, prismatic entity that shapes familial, community, and cultural history. In Oral History by Lee Smith and in Mama Day by Gloria Naylor, the concern is not so much with preserving the past, but with examining, deconstructing, and ultimately redefining the past. These novels represent two diverse aspects...