"The Whole Picture" in Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

In "Mama Day," Gloria Naylor narrates the love story of two black people from strikingly different backgrounds--one who has grown up in a Northern institution run by whites and the other who has been drenched in the traditions of the rural South. The ways in which Naylor deals with the issue of maintaining black cultural identity in the face of attempts by the white world to order, control and define black people are explored.