Beyond sacrifice: Gloria Naylor rewrites the Passion.

We need a god who bleeds now a god whose wounds are not some small male vengeance some pitiful concession to humility a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord

--Ntozake Shange

According to contemporary feminist theory, the process of rewriting and reinventing cultural texts is a liberatory practice. The challenge is to rewrite the established, influential texts of dominant culture in such a way as to explode the myths and symbols that support oppressive ideology. (1) Contemporary black women writers participate in this process in order to critique both racist and patriarchal power structures. I argue that by focusing the rereading and rewriting process on the text most central to Western culture, the Bible, Naylor successfully challenges dominant ideology.

Contemporary African American women writers are part of a long tradition of black writers who have focused their practice of rewriting on the language and narrative of Christianity. The early slave spirituals are examples of this discursive practice where Christian stories and symbolism were recuperated to protest slavery and sometimes to pass information and thwart the white masters. Slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs' challenge Christian definitions of sin and purity in order to argue against slavery in general and the fugitive slave laws in particular. Black writers such as Zora Neale Hurston identify the struggles of African American people with those of the Israelites in Egypt, as does Martin Luther King, Jr. in his speeches. And Malcolm X challenges white images of Christ with the notion that Christ was a black man. Renita Weems asserts the importance of such a project:

   It has proved the task and responsibility of marginalized readers
   today, both female and male, to restore the voice of the oppressed
   in the kingdom of God. In order to do this, they have had to be able
   as much as possible to read and hear the text for themselves, with
   their own eyes and with their own ears. And in the final analysis,
   they have had to be prepared ... to resist those elements of the
   tradition that have sought, even in the name of revelation, to
   diminish their humanity. (77)

There is power in this practice, particularly as the focus is on reenvisioning the Christian myths central to maintaining existing power structures.

Continuing this practice, while at the same time transforming it, contemporary black women writers make more extensive critiques of Christianity and the biblical text from both feminist and antiracist positions. Gloria Naylor uses biblical allusion to critique foundational myths of Western, and specifically American, culture. She aims a pointed critique at the central New Testament myth--the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ--questioning in particular the concept of sacrifice and its relationship to systems of oppression. As part of this critique, "Naylor recasts female sexuality as shaped by Judeo-Christian tradition in which the virgin/whore dichotomy is inescapable" (Alexander 92) and argues for the celebration of female sexuality as necessary for spirituality. Like Shange's poem quoted in the epigraph, Naylor envisions a religion based on female sexuality and its role in the creation of life, and focused on salvation from the racist and sexist oppression supported by traditional Christian theology. Naylor includes biblical intertextuality to extend her critique to the whole of the biblical narrative as it is most often interpreted by mainstream Christianity. In Bailer's Cain, she constructs a cast of characters who closely parallel the biblical characters who prefigure Christ's birth and death. These characters serve to set up George Andrews as a Christ figure. In Mama Day, George's own early death parallels Christ's crucifixion and ultimately calls into question the necessity of such a sacrifice.

In most Catholic and Protestant doctrines, interpretive focus is placed on the crucifixion as emblematic of salvation. Christ's death is the ultimate sacrifice of both Father and Son, and he becomes the quintessential sacrificial lamb, atoning for the sins of those who kill him. As feminist scholars Joanne Brown and Rebecca Parker argue, "Christianity is an abusive theology that glorifies suffering. Is it any wonder that there is so much abuse in modern society when the predominant image or theology of culture is of 'divine child abuse'--God the Father demanding and carrying out the suffering and death of his own son? If Christianity is to be liberating for the oppressed it must itself be liberated from this theology" (26-27). Delores Williams points out the implications of a glorification of suffering and self-sacrifice for black women in particular; it asks black women to accept their own suffering and exploitation as if it were sacred (164-66).

The focus on grace through sacrifice favors the eschatological nature of Christianity over the social reality of Christ's interactions on earth. According to Cornel West in Prophesy Deliverance! this emphasis is one of the major weaknesses in the political and liberatory potential of Christianity. He explains that "a truncated understanding of the core of the Christian gospel accents its otherworldly dimension at the expense of its this-worldly possibilities" (16). Such a doctrine has allowed for, and in some cases prompted, colonization and expansion by Christian nations of "primitive" civilizations such as those in the Americas, Africa, and the Caribbean islands. The belief that Christians must be primarily concerned with the eternal salvation of the souls of heathen natives made it possible and easy to ignore the traumatic physical and social realities caused by European colonization. Such ideas persist in the post-colonial world. Speaking of South America in particular but in terms that can be easily generalized, Robert McAfee Brown explains, "The church taught such acquiescence, passivity, and resignation in the face of poverty and injustice--a political message that the rulers and the rich found ideally suited for keeping the masses docile" (5).

Liberation theology attempts to turn this focus back to the now. (2) It interprets the Christian gospel and the Hebrew Bible in such a way as to be politically and socially relevant for current social and economic situations. This theology uses key passages from the Biblical text such as Matthew 25:31-46 and the Beatitudes and reinterprets them, challenging a reading of the Bible that supports the status quo and ignores social reality. If the "meek shall inherit the earth," they can do so only if they unite and lay claim to it now rather than placing their hopes in heavenly rewards. Liberation theologists see as the aim of the Christian a commitment to relieving economic and social oppression rather than saving souls. Such a philosophy calls attention not only to the needs of the oppressed, but also to our relationship to the forces behind the oppression. Gloria Naylor's critique of biblical interpretation is well within this tradition. She creates in her fiction a reading of the Bible that questions the terms of apocalyptic salvation and presents an argument for social salvation not dependent on sacrificial death. (3)

Naylor's narrative begins in Bailey's Cafe. Though this novel was written after Mama Day, the characters and events in this later novel prefigure those in the earlier one. The three settings, Bailey's Cafe, Gabriel's Pawn Shop, and Eve's, create a mythical space where quasi-biblical figures meet to witness the birth of Naylor's Christ figure. Each woman in Bailey's Cafe represents a biblical figure as part of Naylor's grand critique of the Christian narrative, and each also offers a glimpse of the conflict between a feminine spirituality and the traditional masculine Christianity.

The biblical narrative begins with the original sin and God's punishment. Similarly, Naylor's story revolves around Eve, whose story also begins with sin and punishment. Naylor reverses the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis. Her Eve innocently discovers her own sexuality, a discovery that is connected with the earth and does not involve an illicit sexual relationship with a man. However, the Godfather, Naylor's representative of the Old Testament God, treats Eve's innocent pleasure as something dirty and sinful. Naylor's capitalization of Godfather alludes to the dual meaning of this figure as both a spiritual guardian and a dictatorial leader of a criminal underworld. His early treatment of Eve depicts him as benevolent spiritual parent, while his later actions tie him to the latter oppressive figure. As God does to the first couple, the Godfather banishes Eve from a farming community into veritable desert, the "delta dust," and she eventually settles in the midst of a flourishing self-made Eden.

The fact that Eve's Eden is actually a boarding/whore house heightens the critique of the biblical story. Naylor's version of Eve's story alludes to the connection between the biblical Eve and sexual sin. As Virginia Fowler explains, "Eve's disobedience in the Garden of Eden... did not involve sexuality .... But because redemption was achieved through a woman as well--the Virgin Mary--Eve's sin became, in Western traditions, associated with sexuality" (127). Naylor's focus on sexuality in this novel critiques the identification in patriarchal religious tradition of women as either virgins or whores. This story challenges the notion first that "knowledge of good and evil" is necessarily sinful and worthy of punishment and secondly that banishment from the domain of an authoritative and controlling God-Father is necessarily a punishment at all. For Naylor's narrative, then, Eve is not the cause of man's sin and separation from God; rather, she is the strong woman who expresses the importance of a connection to the earth and to female sexuality. Her part in the larger critique of Christian symbolism and meaning is to question the need for a human sacrifice; if original sin was never a sin, why must there be such a redemption?

Eve is the central figure in Naylor's narrative and is significant not only because of her association with the biblical Eve, but also because of her position as matriarch and guide for most of the characters in the book. In this way, her character resists the stigma attached to Eve as the "mother of sin." Instead, she is, in a very practical way, a savior to replace the traditional sacrificial Christ figure. The salvation she offers is this-worldly rather than apocalyptic.

Eve is comparable to Christ in her thorough knowledge of scripture; however, while Christ uses scripture to withstand temptation, Eve uses it to combat false piety. This knowledge is highlighted by Eve's conflict with Sister Carrie. And in this relationship, the great struggle between a Christianity that focuses on salvation and morality and one that emphasizes benevolence becomes apparent. Sister Carrie uses her Bible to condemn Eve's boarders; however, Eve's knowledge of the biblical text allows her not only to name the exact book, chapter, and verse Carrie uses, but to respond from memory with a verse from the same chapter. Through the conflict between Sister Carrie and Eve, Naylor makes a blatant critique of mainstream Christianity by suggesting that the religion expressed in the Bible and the Christianity professed by billions of people in the world are not necessarily and definitely not always the same thing. Bailey explains, "to me there are a lot of ways to be a Christian, the Bible is an awfully large book" (136).

Carrie adheres to a religion that focuses on the suppression of sexuality. Carrie's relationship with her daughter emphasizes this focus: Carrie is so impressed with the need to save Angel from sin that she refuses to recognize what everyone else sees, that at thirteen, Angel has already lost any youth or spirit she might have had. And though she thoroughly disapproves of the local pimp, Sugarman, her comments about Eve and the other women are most frequently of the same timbre as his. Carrie's fear of sexuality sets her in opposition to Eve, who represents a focus on growth and nature and therefore is more open to expression of sexuality. Eve's openness makes her an independent woman in the position to help other women for whom sex is a central problem.

Eve's boarding house is a place of refuge and of healing for several characters with different manifestations of the same problem of being forced to be "other" in a hierarchical society. And each of these characters parallels a biblical figure. Mary (One), also called Peaches, comes to Eve's a slave to her own physical beauty. This character parallels Mary Magdalen, who appears in all four gospels but whose character remains rather undefined. She is mentioned in all four books as being the first to see Christ after his resurrection, either in body or in spirit, but her relationship to Christ is explained only in Mark, where the reader learns that Christ had driven out seven demons from her during his ministry (Mattthew 8:2, Mark 16:9). Mary Magdalen's character is somewhat ambiguous in the biblical text, but in interpretation, she is often presented as a prostitute who is forgiven. This image of Magdalen comes from the conflation of several female characters in the gospels, including the sinful woman who anoints Christ's feet at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7), Mary of Bethany, and the adulterous woman Christ saves from stoning (John 8). This composite Magdalen dominates interpretations of her relationship to Christ in the gospels, and she epitomizes both the sin of sexuality and sorrowful repentance. (4)

Like Mary Magdalen, Peaches/Mary(One) is both sinner and saint, caught between the two images available for women in Christian ideology, Mary the virgin and Mary the whore. As Mary, she strives to live up to the image worshipped by her father, beautiful and pure, but her alter ego, Peaches, excites forbidden desires in all men: "Everywhere I turned, I could see her. But what was she doing in my room? She was a whore and I was Daddy's baby" (104). The salvation Eve offers her is not a dictum to "Go and sin no more," as Jesus suggests to the adulteress in John, but an invitation to stay and know herself, to choose her own role. Eve's plan is to allow Peaches to discover an integrated self.

Peaches/Mary's story questions the biblical interpretation that associates women with either illicit sexuality or virginal purity. Likewise, Jesse Bell represents a dual figure, paralleling both Hannah in I Samuel and, as her name implies, the infamous Jezebel. She presents a critique of this same association and its role in the subjugation of women in Christian mythology.

Queen Jezebel, wife of King Ahab of Israel, appears in I and II Kings and is known for her treacherous influence over her husband and for her idolatry. Her enemies are the prophets Elijah and Elisha who constantly condemn her for her sinful ways and her worship of the pagan God Baal. Jesse Bell's relationship with Eli, the patriarch of the King family, resembles this animosity between Elijah and Jezebel. And while in the Bible Elijah speaks for the "one true God," Uncle Eli worships white society. Eli's worship of "dicty white folks" (125) as God is a comment on the traditional concept of the Christian God and how that concept has been used to keep both black people and women confined to narrow spaces in religious terms.

For Jesse, the conflict with Uncle Eli reaches its most intense point at the cook-out with the Kings and the Bells. Uncle Eli's invitation to Jesse Bell's family is a set-up "to embarrass them in front of everyone" (129). In her depiction of this event, Naylor leads the reader to pity and sympathize with the Bells "trying to light up the charcoal ... in all that rain" while Uncle Eli and his followers watch them from a tent with a catered feast "looking out at 'em like they were a bunch of trained monkeys from the circus" (130). This moment both parallels and sharply contrasts the showdown on Mount Carmel between Elijah and Jezebel's prophets of Baal. In the biblical "cook-out," Elijah is triumphant when his fire, doused with twelve jugs of water, is lit by divine intervention. The prophets of Baal look foolish, dancing around the bull on their altar begging Baal to light it while Elijah taunts them (I Kings 18:16-39). Naylor's rewriting of this story questions both the bad reputation accorded to Jezebel and her prophets and Elijah's hero status.

Though Jezebel's and Ahab's most heinous sin is idolatry, the epithet jezebel has come to connote a sexually wicked woman. Jesse Bell's name also becomes erroneously associated with sexual depravity. Her rejection of the Kings' value system is made explicit when her lesbian relationship, though accepted by her husband, becomes a reason for scandal and means for discrediting her as a wife and as a mother. In the strict codes of a patriarchal system such as is represented by Uncle Eli and his family, a woman can be only one kind of wife and mother. Any deviation in terms of sexuality is ostracized. (5)

As a result of her rejection of Uncle Eli's god, Jesse Bell loses access to her son, who is educated and reared in the King tradition by Uncle Eli's chosen nanny and tutor. This part of Jesse Bell's story parallels that of Hannah, a biblical figure quite different from the notorious Jezebel. Hannah, mother of King David's prophet Samuel, fervently prays for a son and is answered with Samuel. In thanks, she promises to dedicate him to the church.

Hannah gives her child to Eli the high priest thankfully; however, in Naylor's version of this story, Jesse Bell's son is separated from her emotionally by Uncle Eli's subtle sabotage of her familial relationships. Through this image of the King family, and of Uncle Eli in particular, Naylor asks the reader to consider the story from the perspective of Hannah and, rather than see it as a touching story of faith rewarded, understand it as a painful sacrifice of a woman and mother to the male order of the priesthood to which she can never have access. Naylor's combination of these two characters, Hannah and Jezebel, questions the roles available for women in the Judeo-Christian tradition and at the same time aligns the "men of God" represented by Elijah and the high priest Eli with the oppressive white masculine society.

To further this critique of the position of women in biblical interpretation, Naylor uses one more Old Testament figure and challenges accepted meanings of her story. The biblical text of Esther is interesting because it is one of only two books in the Bible named after women and primarily about women. Naylor's chapter about Esther in Bailey's Cafe calls into question the significance of this biblical account of a Jewish queen, particularly in the way it has been perceived. The biblical Esther is a young Jewish woman whose people live in exile in Persia. She becomes Queen to King Ahaseurus, hiding her nationality until the day when divulging her Jewish heritage saves her people from genocide. Naylor's version of this story reveals a less romantic view of the biblical story. Rather than focus on Esther's courage, she "reconstructs the story so that the issue of slavery is in the forefront along with the profligate behavior of the men who buy and sell women" (Alexander 97).

The similarities between Esther and Naylor's character are striking. Both Esthers are members of a racial minority exiled from their native homeland. Both are parentless and have been taken in by a male relative, a brother in Naylor's story and a cousin in the biblical story. In the same way that the biblical Esther replaces the defiant Queen Vashti (Esther 1:9-20 and 2:17), Naylor's Esther replaces "The Bitch" and becomes a sex slave to a man who is not her husband.

Like Ahaseurus over Esther's people, Esther's "husband" in Naylor's story holds power over her through her brother. Her relationship with the white landowner is much like that of a King's concubine. She must come only when he calls her, and he does so only to have her perform unmentionable sexual acts in the dark basement. And it is in this darkness that she, like the biblical character, is able, so she believes, to disguise her race. The twelve years she maintains her role as sexual object are to repay her brother for taking her in against his wife's wishes. Her decision not to kill her "husband" because "there are too many of them too kill" (99) leads to her position as heroine. While the biblical Esther risks her life and saves her people, Naylor's Esther stays in the dark and takes upon herself the sexual depravity of men like her "husband" in order to save other young black girls from the fate she's suffered. The relationship of Naylor's Esther to her white "husband" signifies the true nature of the relationship of the biblical Esther to King Ahaseurus. She was his concubine--literally a sexual servant--and both Esthers are denied sexual freedom so that men in their families can prosper. They are women, to be used in any way their brothers, cousins, kings, or "husbands" see fit.

With these four figures, Eve, Esther, Jesse Bell, and Mary (One), the configuration of Naylor's narrative as parallel to the biblical text begins to be clear. These characters represent four of the most important women in the Bible, all connected in some way to the story of Christ, but they are rewritten to embody the sexuality that is either denied or denigrated in Judeo-Christian tradition. Hannah/Jesse Bell is the mother of the prophet who anoints David, Jesus' ancestor; Esther is the woman who saves the Jews from genocide, making it possible for Christ to come from that race; Mary Magdalen/Peaches is the first person to see Christ after the resurrection; and Eve is both the mother of humanity and the originator of sin. In order for Naylor's critique of the biblical text to be complete, these characters must be present as prefigurers of Christ.

In addition to these significant women, Naylor also places at the scene of the miraculous birth and the events that lead up to it Bailey and his wife Nadine, as well as Gabriel the keeper of the pawnshop. In terms of the Christian biblical narrative, Bailey plays two significant roles, that of Abraham and that of Joseph. He and Nadine together parallel two primary figures of the Hebrew Bible, Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham's significance in the biblical text is as the father of the Jewish race. The Hebrew God promises to make a nation out of Abraham and Sarah's offspring, and from Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, comes the nation of Israel. Because of God's promises, Abraham faithfully packs up and moves to a new land, changes his name from Abram to Abraham, and even willingly intends to offer his only legitimate son Isaac as a human sacrifice to God. The story turns out well for Abraham. His descendents do become a nation, though one that suffers as much as it prospers. However, Naylor's version of this story gives a different perspective of Abraham's faith in God's promises. Bailey is Naylor's Abraham, but Bailey is in a very different position from this great patriarch. Rather than being the father of a chosen race, Bailey is the owner of a cafe which exists on "the edge of the world" (28).

Nadine's role is crucial to strengthen the identification of Bailey as an Abraham figure. She parallels Sarah in terms of a biblical pun, a tenuous connection produced by their common reaction to the will of masculinity, laughter. The name Isaac signifies this reaction by Sarah. When Sarah laughs at the overheard prediction that she will bear a child in her old age to Abraham, she is chastised by the men of the Lord and denies laughing. Isaac means "he laughed." Sarah alludes to this name when she says, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me" (Genesis 21:6).

Like Sarah, Nadine laughs in the face of the ridiculousness of men, of Bailey in particular. But also like Sarah, Nadine laughs secretly. Bailey has to read that silent laugh in her eyes: "Looking deep into her eyes, I saw that she was laughing. Down at the bottom of those dark orbs, she was bent over double and howling. She laughed and laughed and laughed" (19). Through this hidden laughter, Naylor links Nadine with the biblical Sarah, thereby strengthening the link between Bailey and Abraham, while at the same time suggesting the power of laughter when it is directed towards masculine assumptions of femininity.

Bailey is called by some force to become proprietor of Bailey's Cafe, much like Abraham is called to journey to the "promised land." But before he is called, he, like Abraham, is asked to make a sacrifice in order to receive God's promises. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son foreshadows, for Christians, the ultimate sacrifice of the Christ who is professed to be God's son. In Bailey's account of his experience in the Pacific during WWII, Naylor explicitly questions both a blind devotion to an unknowable God and the notion of such a sacrifice. Bailey's fear of marching into Tokyo is ultimately the fear of losing his soul watching "The very young, the deformed, and the old" (25) destroy themselves to save their land. His prayer is a plea for some higher force to keep him from marching to Tokyo: "I offered any god who would answer even the rights to my unborn children. And the only god to answer claimed them" (26).

It is in this prayer that we see Bailey's most poignant parallel to Abraham. Like the biblical patriarch, Bailey is willing to sacrifice his children to "god." This sacrifice, however, is one Bailey lives to regret because the result is Hiroshima and Nagasaki--events that change Bailey's perception of America. He explains, "My prayers had saved me, but the one god to answer went on to spawn for this country the sons--and more sadly, the daughters--who could have marched into Tokyo.... A different prayer, could there have been a different prayer" (26-7). While Abraham is revered for his faith in God, Bailey is to be pitied for his blind sacrifice.

The end of Bailey's Cafe marks the birth of George Andrews, Naylor's Christ figure. To the characters paralleling Old and New Testament figures assembled at the Cafe, Naylor adds the figure of Gabriel, representative of God's angel Gabriel who first announces Christ's birth to Mary, and Mariam, the virgin mother herself. Gabriel acts much like the cherubim guarding the gate of the garden of Eden with "flaming sword flashing back and forth" (Genesis 3:25), but his arrow guards Eve's garden by sending people in a circle running back and forth between his pawn shop and Bailey's Cafe. Only those Bailey finds most needy does he direct to Eve's. So Mariam is the exception.

Naylor's Mary(Two), Mariam, is a pregnant virgin from the Beta-Israel, a settlement of Ethiopian Jews who combine ancient Jewish tradition and the Law of Moses with the rites of sacrifice and female circumcision. Her story highlights the miraculousness of her situation as pregnant virgin and also heightens the critique Naylor makes of the Judeo-Christian notion of sacrifice as a means to salvation. Naylor carefully describes the Beta-Israel through the use of the biblical text to which they adhere, pointing out their patriarchal structure based on the laws of Moses. Combining the law of Moses with the law of the Blue Nile, the Beta-Israel practice female circumcision to ensure the purity of the women of their sect. Naylor describes this process by layering the descriptions with biblical quotation, emphasizing the almost seamless way these two practices fit together:

   The child's hanging skin is held together with acacia thorns and
   boiled thread. A clean straw is inserted to ensure there will be a
   small opening after the body has healed itself shut.... The girl may
   cry when it is time to relieve herself. Drip by drip. But she will
   know this hut again. And she will know no other way to pass her
   blocked menstrual blood. Drip by drip.

   The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.
   Who can find a virtuous woman ? [F]or her price is far above rubies.
   The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall
   have no need of spoil. (151-52)

In addition to this passage from Proverbs, other verses from Genesis and Song of Songs help to punctuate the descriptions of the circumcision process. By displaying the injustice and gruesomeness of this practice of female genital mutilation in relation to the biblical text, Naylor questions the validity of patriarchal religious practices as they relate to women. More importantly, by aligning the practice of genital mutilation--often seen in terms of western values as a barbaric and inhumane practice--with the biblical text that serves as the basis for western religious belief, Naylor attaches the horror of such barbarism to Christianity itself.

Mariam's pregnancy is a miracle, because "no man has even tried" to break through her sealed womanhood (152). The descriptions of Mariam's purification in the hut of blood and her banishment from her village raise the initial critique of such a system that places little value on women besides the value of their virginity and physical purity. That critique is strengthened by the critique of the notion of sacrifice through the fate of Mariam's mother. Like Bailey's prayer, which is not answered as he thought it would be, Mariam's mother's prayer fails her as well. Instead of finding forgiveness for her child, she finds herself condemned upon the sacrificial altar for entering the Holy of Holies, a place where no woman is allowed. She must become the sacrifice: "Stumbling to her feet, she sees the double-edged knives hanging at the side of the altar. There is only one type of prayer to be said in here. She turns to stone. And before the world goes blank, she hears the wailing of her youngest boy as the silent crowd begins to part for the high priest" (157). As readers, we sympathize with Mariam's mother, who faithfully follows the precepts of her religious community, including offering the proper sacrifices--and when this faithful woman is sacrificed, the reader is led to question the notion of sacrifice as a means of atoning for sin.

Naylor enlarges this local critique through her narrative of a Christ figure who needlessly sacrifices his life. The birth of this figure ends Bailey's Cafe. The people and events leading up to his birth complete an historical framework for the narrative. And the birth itself fulfills the criteria for a miracle. In this novel, Naylor ties George Andrews to Christ through Mariam's position as virgin mother and through the setting of the birth itself. Eve's device for numbing the pains, the use of light, makes the hut in the back of the cafe where Mariam gives birth much like the famous stable in Bethlehem lit by an enormous star: "Sparkling. Shimmering. Waves of light.... Silvers. Pearls. Iridescent pinks.... Glowing copper. Gilded orange. And all kinds of gold" (225).

Once the baby is born, everyone in the cafe begins singing along with the baby's cry, imitating the voices of angels in Luke: "Soon we were all singing, a bit ragged and off-key. But all singing. / Peace on earth, Mary rocked the cradle. / Mary rocked the cradle and Mary rocked the cradle / Peace on earth, Mary rocked the cradle. / Tell him--was with the child of God" (226). Nadine's suggestion that "maybe it's meant for this baby to bring in a whole new era" sets the expectations for this child to be some kind of savior. She further suggests, "Maybe when it gets here, it'll be like an explosion of new hope or something" (160). Unfortunately, that new hope is not fully realized in Bailey's Cafe. Instead, Bailey, acting as honorary Sandek, or godfather, takes on the role of Joseph to Christ in the ceremony of circumcision and naming, and then after his mother's death, young George is given to Irene Jackson, a practical woman who runs an orphanage and who does not believe in miracles. As Bailey solemnly predicts, she will not be able to pass to George the truth of his birth. This closing lament that George will never know the truth of his parentage sets up the conflict between the logical and the mythical that brings about the outcome of George's story.

Chronologically, the narrative of George Andrew's life and death begins here with his birth. However, his position as Christ figure is set up in Mama Day through his sacrificial death, and Mama Day was written before Bailey's Cafe. Naylor sets up her Christ figure first and then follows it up by constructing a history for her character. This order mimics the construction of Christ's own history. According to recent biblical scholarship, the miraculous birth narratives in Matthew and Luke, as well as the details of Christ's baptism, were constructed decades after Christ's death. (6)

In Mama Day, Naylor's matriarchal society on the tiny island of Willow Springs stands in opposition to contemporary American hierarchical society represented by New York. The three voices used to narrate the novel help to illustrate this opposition. George speaks for logic, the voice of the island community speaks for spirituality, and Cocoa speaks as one operating between these two worlds, one who thinks rationally but who acknowledges the power of myth and magic. In Part II, the island voice begins to dominate the narrative as Cocoa and George come to Willow Springs, and the ultra-rational George is forced to confront a way of life he did not believe existed. This confrontation sets the stage for Naylor's rewriting of the Christian revelation.

In her review of Mama Day, Bharati Mukherjee acknowledges that Naylor's characters "believe in a pre-Christian, pre-rational reality" (20); however, the religion Naylor creates is post-Christian rather than pre-Christian because although it seems to be based on a primitive culture complete with "alternate realities, ... ghosts and spells" (Mukherjee 21), it is actually a rewriting of basic Christian symbolism, a rewriting that criticizes one of the basic principles of Judeo-Christian thought: penitent sacrifice.

The central figures for Christianity are the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. The Father is the creator of humanity, the Son is humanity's savior, and the Holy Spirit is the counselor and guide. Naylor accepts the concept of the trinity into her rewriting, but she perceptibly alters the three figures and the myths that surround them by changing their roles and, in some cases, their genders.

One controlling metaphor for the creator in Judeo-Christian theology is the benevolent but firm Father, and Christians are his errant children who must be punished and rewarded according to their deeds. This father figure is based on the Yahweh of the Hebrew bible. In Mama Day, Naylor replaces this image of the creator as father with the image of creator as mother. Miranda Day, the title character, receives the name "Mama" not because she has many children of her own--in fact, she has none--but because as midwife, she has "created," or birthed, most of the inhabitants of Willow Springs. Naylor's creator is not the virginal mother represented in Christianity by the Madonna, but a figurative mother. Mama Day gives up her chance to be a daughter because she must care for her own mother who grieves for a dead child, and she gives up the chance to be a mother because she must care for everyone else's children: "Being there for Mama and child. For sister and child. Being there to catch so many babies that dropped into her hands.... and [she's] had--Lord, can't count 'em--into the hundreds. Everybody's mama now" (88-89).

Though she is not a biological mother, her position as creator is established through her close connection to the natural world. She sees herself as one who works with nature to create, "knowing how to get under, around, and beside nature to give it a push," rather than commanding or trying to get over nature" (262). Her power to create comes from her love of living things and her acceptance of and knowledge about female sexuality: "Miranda rocks and thinks of the things she can make grow. The joy she got from any kind of life. Can't nothing be wrong in bringing on life" (262). Mama Day's role as creator is firmly realized when Bernice comes to Mama Day for help, and she is able to perform a "miracle" by giving Bernice the child she and her husband could not conceive naturally. Mama Day dismisses her part in the miracle by suggesting that "she wasn't changing the natural course of nothing. She couldn't if she tried. Just using what's there" (139); however, what occurs at the "other place" strikes the contemporary American reader as unnatural:

   [Bernice] strips down naked, rests her head on the embroidered
   pillow, and props her feet high up.... She ain't flesh, she's a
   center between the thighs spreading wide to take in ... the touch of
   feathers. Space to space. Ancient fingers keeping each in line. The
   uncountable, the unthinkable is one opening. Pulsing and
   alive--wet--the egg moves from one space to the other. A rhythm
   older than woman draws it in and holds it tight. (140)

This passage shows Mama Day and her "ancient hands" manipulating and creating life, particularly human life.

In addition to acting as creator, Mama Day accepts the role of nurturer and spiritual healer for the community of Willow Springs. She has extensive knowledge of natural medicine, like the fact that choke cherry bark can be used as a pain killer, that castor oil and jimson can cure worms, and that Indian tobacco can help cure croup, and while she doles out this medicinal aid to her patients, she aims her words of wisdom at those who are in need of such lessons. She is respected by the doctor from the mainland for her medical knowledge; however, more importantly, she is revered by the people of Willow Springs who listen to her and follow her advice religiously, "'Cause if Mama Day say no, everybody say no.... Nobody was gonna trifle with Mama Day's, 'cause she know how to use it" (6). Mama Day's age adds to her mystique and to her image as wise woman and eternal mother because as the voice of the island suggests, she "is about as close to eternity [as] anybody can come" (7).

Mama Day is a conjure woman, mid-wife, and the emotional mother of the island. Sapphira Wade is the spiritual mother of the island and is present in the natural setting. She is the Holy Spirit in Naylor's trinity; however, rather than being the gentle guiding spirit that acts as a "Counselor" (John 14:26) to "guide [Christians] ... into truth" (John 16:13), Sapphira is a frightening presence that reminds the people of slavery, broken hearts, and the overwhelming power of nature. Sapphira is the spirit of an African slave woman bought by Bascombe Wade and brought to Willow Springs in or around 1823. Like the women in Bailey's Cafe, she represents women oppressed because of their strength and sexuality. As her bill of sale acknowledges, she was considered obstinate because of her refusal to accept the role of slave, and because of her knowledge of nature and female sexuality, she was given the title "witch." No one really knows whether Sapphira drowned in the Atlantic Ocean or rode the wind back to Africa, but they do know that Bascombe Wade remained behind and either died of a broken heart or was murdered by her before she disappeared. While her name is never spoken on the island, and she "don't live in the part of ... memory we can use to form words," her presence is felt and described as "18 & 23" (4), a colloquial phrase taken from the year Sapphira returns to Africa that is used to describe any defiant behavior, good or bad. Like the biblical deity, Sapphira takes many different forms, "satin black, biscuit cream, red as Georgia clay: depending upon which of us takes a mind to her," and she can perform different feats, "walk through a lightening storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightening in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightening to start the kindling going under her medicine pot: depending on which of us takes a mind to her" (3).

Like Mama Day, Sapphira has the power to create because it is Sapphira who gives birth to seven sons and becomes "the Mother who began the Days" (262), with "Days" representing both Mama Day's family line and the actual passage of time because "'God rested on the seventh day and so would she'" (1); however, it is Sapphira's power to destroy for which she is best known. Sapphira's appearance on the island comes in the form of a hurricane, and while George believes that "the winds coming around the corner of that tiny house on that tiny island was God" (252), Mama Day closes her sister Abigail's Bible because she knows that such power "could only be the workings of Woman" (251). This hurricane has the power to destroy the nature to which Mama Day is connected, to wipe-out the bridge that serves as Willow Springs' only physical connection to the mainland, and to take away the life that Mama Day created for Bernice.

When ultimate power is required, Sapphira is the one to whom Mama Day must turn. When the jealous Ruby poisons Cocoa with a mixture of nightshade, voodoo, and hate, Mama Day, knowing she cannot save Cocoa on her own, kneels and prays "to the Father and Son as she'd been taught. But she falls asleep, murmuring the names of women. And in her dreams she finally meets Sapphira" (280). This passage, like the failed prayers of Bailey and Mariam's mother, illustrates the powerlessness of traditional prayer. The "Father and Son" here represent the stale Christianity based on a patriarchal model, while Sapphira Wade represents the power of a spirituality based on nature.

Unfortunately, even the power of Sapphira is not enough in this situation to save Cocoa. Because Cocoa has joined her life with George, Mama Day must solicit his aid as the third figure in the trinity. George is closely compared to Christ, and Naylor uses him to criticize and reject the central image of Christianity, the crucifixion of the Savior. The cycle of self-sacrifice and unnecessary death is set up in the novel as a familial curse. In the history of the Days, men lose themselves through broken hearts, and women sacrifice themselves. Miranda's mother, Ophelia, and Cocoa's mother, Grace, are poignant examples of sacrificial death, the former dying for her child, and the latter for her lover. George, because of his love for Cocoa, represents the possibility of an end to this cycle.

For Christians, the cross, whether depicted as the Catholic crucifix or the Protestant empty cross, represents salvation. Through George, Naylor calls this symbol into question by pointing to the needlessness of sacrificial death. Although George corresponds to the Christian savior in many ways, he is a tragic rewriting of the biblical figure. When Cocoa is dying from Ruby's curse, George is willing to sacrifice his life for her, even cross the sound in a rowboat, and in this great love and willful sacrifice, George is much like the biblical Christ. Naylor points to this similarity through the use of clever puns; Cocoa's mother, ironically, was named Grace, making Cocoa the "child of Grace," the title reserved for the followers of Christ, and she was the "only one left alive to keep the Days," both the family and time itself, "going" (39).

George's central flaw, one that forces him into the role of sacrificial lamb, is his inability to accept the irrational. Unlike Christ, George is not sure of his parentage. He is an orphan with a heart condition and is told that his mother was a prostitute who killed herself in an alley after his birth and that his father was unknown. Although we know from Bailey's Cafe that George is misinformed, this false knowledge forms the basis of his life philosophy. The proprietor of the orphanage in which George is raised reiterates for her charges the idea that all one can rely on is himself and the present; therefore, George grows up believing only in the rational and real. This belief serves him well in New York, but it causes his downfall once he enters the mystical world of Willow Springs.

George does save the child of Grace by losing his own life, like the savior in the biblical narrative, but his death is unnecessary. George believes that he can save Cocoa in some rational, logical way, and he refuses to acknowledge that the problem is not a rational problem. He finally gives up and goes to Mama Day for the answers; however, when he finds out her plans to save Cocoa, plans that to him sound completely irrational, he rejects them as "mumbo-jumbo" (295). This scene with George and Mama Day contrasts sharply with the scene in the Bible in the Garden of Gethsemene where Jesus prays to the Father, "yet not my will, but yours be done" (Luke 22:42). In the biblical story, the Father's plan is sacrificial death, and George, so infused with the values of a masculine hierarchical western society, accepts this plan rather than believing in Mama Day and saving his own life as well as Cocoa's. (7)

This conflict between George and Mama Day and George's eventual failure to accept Mama Day's belief is foreshadowed in George's dream about walking on water. In the dream, Mama Day urges him to "Get up and Walk" across the Sound. George more resembles the doubting Peter than Christ when he pushes himself out of the water to yell at her and is surprised that he can stand (184). (8)

The climax of the story occurs when in a momentary act of faith George finally goes to Mama Day for help, but his inability to believe in her solution makes it impossible for him to act it out. When she sends him to the chicken coop carrying her father's cane and her great-grandfather's ledger, asking him to bring back whatever he finds, all she needs is for him to bring back his empty hands; however, because he does not believe, he cannot do as she asks. George is figuratively crucified, wounded by the chickens on his ankles and wrists, and dying of heart failure. When he finally reaches Cocoa after this ordeal, the blood from his hands ends the voodoo curse, and he therefore succeeds in saving her; however, her salvation is bought at the needless expense of his life. Ironically, her salvation constitutes an escape from the cycle of sacrifice represented by George, and her ancestors before him. Naylor's Christ figure is a savior despite the sacrifice of his life, not because of it, and while George does gain immortality, it is spent in the graveyard on Willow Springs, a much more earthly immortality than sitting on "the right hand of the Father" (Ephesians 1:20).

Although George's sacrifice inadvertently saves Cocoa, the ritual celebration on Willow Springs that takes the place of Christmas commemorates Sapphira, the woman who broke a man's heart "wide open" (151), and is in no way connected to the birth or crucifixion of the savior. Candle Walk is celebrated on December 22 every year, and though people like Reverend Hooper try to assert the importance of Christmas, "any fool knows Christmas is December twenty-fifth--that ain't never caught on too much" in Willow Springs (108). Peter Erickson acknowledges that this assertion of the island holiday "signifies cultural independence," but he fails to see the subversive nature of this holiday, seeing it as simply a "non-Christian observance of the winter solstice" (243), rather than as the worship of a female deity. In the past, Candle Walk was a way to pay homage to the spirit of Sapphira, helping her on her way to Africa, and in the present of the narrative, the people of Willow Springs celebrate their holiday by carrying candles and giving gifts from the earth to their neighbors in need, whispering "Lead on with light" to those who pass them. Helen Fiddyment Levy explains, "Like the male deity, Sapphira has her own day of commemoration whose nature implicitly comments on the mainland's commercialized Christmas" (282). Naylor has her characters reject one of the most meaningful and symbolic Christian holidays for a more pure version of a holiday based on benevolence. The other significant holiday, Easter, which celebrates the resurrection of the crucified Christ, disappears altogether in a spirituality that does not glorify sacrifice.

Through George Andrews and his constructed history, Naylor ultimately critiques the foundational symbol of Christianity, the cross, by suggesting that George never had to die to save the child of grace. The salvation George brings to Cocoa and to Willow Springs is a sense of community, displayed best in the renewed understanding of and participation in Candle Walk and in the common understanding of "18 & 23" explained in the novel's beginning, but had George been able to understand that community himself, he would have followed Mama Day's instructions and lived.

Naylor's critique of the Judeo-Christian notion of atonement sacrifice extends beyond a biblical critique to an attempt to dismantle the social structures of domination and oppression. The concepts of atonement and of scapegoating are both employed in the narrative of Christ's death and resurrection. Christ, according to biblical symbolism, is both the sacrificial lamb offered in exchange for the cleansing of sins and the scapegoat upon whom the sins of the human community are placed and cast out of society. Both concepts tie Christ's purpose to ancient Jewish practice. These concepts strengthen the notion of Christ as "suffering servant," and traditional theology suggests that to be like Christ one must mimic Christ's passive acceptance of his persecution. This message has troubling implications for oppressed people, denying them the right to fight for justice and liberation and supporting the maintenance of existing power relations. Naylor's suggestion that sacrificial death is unnecessary not only critiques the biblical text, but also offers a space for liberatory and revolutionary practice.

By rejecting the Christian trinity and Christian myth and replacing these myths with her own, Naylor subverts the symbolism on which dominant ideology is based. She replaces the dominant masculine image of sacrifice with a spirituality based on connection to nature. This new spirituality breaks the dichotomy of the whore/virgin roles for women and makes female sexuality central to religion. By lessening the power of the male images of Father and Son and replacing them with Mama Day and Sapphira, conjure women whose focus is on creation and connection to nature, Naylor reinterprets the biblical text and argues for a more viable form of Christianity.

Notes

(1.) Kristeva gives us the language to talk about the liberatory power of rewriting. She discusses the need to work within language to challenge social and cultural codes, particularly those codes that serve to marginalize women and people of color. She explains that "all functions which suppose a frontier ... and the transgression of that frontier are relevant to any account of signifying practice where practice is taken as meaning the acceptance of a symbolic law together with the transgression of that law for the purpose of renovating it" (29). The language of dominant discourse, then, must be interrupted by repeatedly replacing central myths and symbolic language, separating oppressive ideology from its foundations. Rewriting and reinventing cultural texts becomes a significant discursive practice.

(2.) For further discussion of Liberation theology, see Gutierrez and McAfee Brown. Cone outlines a liberation theology particularly in relation to Blackness. For information on feminist liberation theology, see Welch.

(3.) The biblical narrative has as its focus the miraculous revelation of Christ's death and resurrection. In recent Protestant tradition, the biblical text, particularly the Old Testament, is often discussed as a series of related but overall separate incidents. In fact, the Bible is most often read as a series of repeated messages, rather than as scenes that make up a continuous plot. Although traditional Christian biblical scholarship and theology see the Bible as a continuous story illuminating the divine being's ultimate plan as it is accomplished in the man Jesus Christ, rarely in Christian churches is the Bible read as literature; rather it is used as a grouping of instructional texts loosely bound by a theme. Naylor's rewriting of the text reemphasizes the Christian reading of the Bible as a complete document, while at the same time questioning the reliance on the interpretation that has come out of that document.

(4.) For a more thorough discussion of the composite Magdalen and the implications of this interpretation, see Haskins. Fowler also notes the similarities between Mary Magdalen and Peaches.

(5.) Fowler further discusses Naylor's allusions to the biblical text in Jesse Bell's story, focusing particularly on the comparison between Jezebel's gruesome death, which fulfilled Elijah's prophecy, and Jesse Bell's ruin and figurative death.

(6.) Accepted New Testament scholarship suggests that Mark was the first gospel, written around 70 C. E., approximately thirty-five years after the death of Christ. Matthew and Luke are thought to have been written later still, and both are believed to be taken in part from Mark's gospel. The fact that the birth narrative doesn't appear in Mark leads scholars to believe it was constructed and circulated in the years between the writing of Mark and Matthew. For a good synopsis of scholarship on the historical Jesus and a bibliography of sources, see Shorto.

(7.) Saunders makes a point that highlights the irony of George's disbelief: "Christianity itself is largely based on the acceptance of and faith in entities that are unseen and, for the practical person, totally unbelievable. Yet Christianity flourishes as one of the most pervasive modes of thought in the civilized world" (58).

(8.) In Matthew 14:22-33, Christ urges Peter to walk out on the water to meet him. Peter does, but then doubts and begins to drown.

Works Cited

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Adriane L. Ivey

Oxford College of Emory University