CHARACTER
One Crazy Summerby Rita Williams-Garcia

Big Ma

Big Ma

Quick Facts

  • Role: Paternal grandmother and primary caregiver to Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern Gaither
  • First appearance: The airport farewell in the opening chapter
  • Home: Moved from Alabama to Brooklyn to raise the girls with their father, Pa
  • Core values: Tradition, discipline, faith, and practicality; a stabilizing force in the girls’ lives
  • Key relationships: The Gaither sisters; Cecile Johnson (Nzila); Pa (Louis Gaither)
  • Symbolism: Embodies a traditional, hands-on motherhood and the theme of Family, Motherhood, and Abandonment

Who They Are

Bold, immovable, and deeply protective, Big Ma is the girls’ true mother figure—the keeper of rules, routines, and “home training.” In a world where their birth mother is distant and unconventional, Big Ma stands as the opposite: present, structured, and unwavering. The book offers a snapshot image that encapsulates her: in a loose-fitting, violet-and-green muumuu at the airport, she hugs the girls so tightly that Delphine feels “mushed up” in the fabric—softness wrapped in sternness. Big Ma’s voice becomes Delphine’s moral compass, echoing in Oakland whenever the new world contradicts the old one Big Ma taught her to trust.

Personality & Traits

Big Ma’s defining feature is her certainty. To her, the past sets the standard, and the family survives by holding fast to it. Her love takes the form of structure and caution; her discipline is a way to keep the girls safe and respectable in a world she doesn’t trust to be kind.

  • Traditional and resistant to change: “It’s change she has no pity on… Idlewild will never be JFK. Cassius Clay will never be Muhammad Ali.” Her refusal to rename the airport or Ali signals a worldview where names—and the histories they carry—anchor reality.
  • Strict and no-nonsense: At the airport, she orders the girls to “act right,” worried they’ll “make a grand Negro spectacle of ourselves.” Even from afar, she scolds Delphine for a collect call—proof that care, to Big Ma, means guarding dignity and dollars.
  • Judgmental and unforgiving: “She hadn’t considered forgiveness where Cecile was concerned.” Big Ma’s faith turns hard-edged when it comes to Cecile, and her moral clarity becomes a lens Delphine initially adopts.
  • Protective and loving: She arranges for a Black woman on the plane to watch the girls and breaks down in a rare, tearful goodbye. Under the sternness lies fear of loss—and fierce devotion.
  • Pragmatic and hardworking: From “washboard days” to “scrub like you’re a gal from a one-cow town,” she teaches labor as love and security, shaping Delphine’s competence and sense of duty.

Character Journey

Big Ma herself is largely static, but her steadiness is the point: she is the fixed star by which Delphine navigates a shifting sky. As Delphine encounters Oakland’s radical politics and her distant mother’s artistic life, she constantly measures them against Big Ma’s sayings and standards. That inner dialogue forms the spine of Delphine’s Coming of Age: she learns which of Big Ma’s teachings are protective truths to keep—and which judgments she must loosen to make room for nuance, forgiveness, and her own understanding of home.

Key Relationships

  • The Gaither Sisters: With the girls, Big Ma is exacting but dependable—she feeds, disciplines, and prepares them to move through the world with pride. Her training makes Delphine the stand-in adult, a responsibility Delphine both resents and honors, especially once the sisters face Oakland without the protections of Big Ma’s rules.

  • Cecile Johnson (Nzila): Big Ma’s sharpest judgments land on Cecile, whom she sees as selfish and unfit. Her warnings—Cecile “lives on the street… in a hole in the wall”—shape the girls’ fears before they ever meet their mother, setting up a moral contest between traditional caretaking and Cecile’s extreme independence.

  • Pa (Louis Gaither): Pa respects Big Ma but quietly asserts his own authority—he sends the girls to Oakland despite her protests. Delphine notices his “respectful way of ignoring Big Ma,” a dynamic that shows how love can coexist with limits in their family.

Defining Moments

Big Ma appears briefly in person, but her moments reverberate throughout the novel, each crystallizing her values and influence.

  • The airport farewell: She argues the girls shouldn’t have to travel to prove what Cecile abandoned, arranges a watcher on the flight, and clings to the old name “Idlewild.” Why it matters: This farewell establishes Big Ma’s protective love, pride, and refusal to cede moral ground to Cecile.
  • The collect call: “Do you know how much this phone call is costing your father?” Why it matters: Big Ma’s love expresses itself as thrift and accountability; she protects the household economy as fiercely as the girls’ reputations.
  • “Big Ma said…” refrains: Delphine constantly cites Big Ma’s rules about cleanliness, behavior, and caution around the Panthers. Why it matters: Big Ma becomes the internal narrator of tradition, a voice Delphine must both honor and outgrow.
  • Work-and-warning lessons: “Scrub like you’re a gal from a one-cow town… Can’t have you dreaming… That’ll only lead to ruin.” Why it matters: Big Ma treats imagination as risky and labor as safety, a philosophy that later collides with Cecile’s art and politics.

Essential Quotes

I don’t mind saying it, but this isn’t right. Coming out to Idlewild and putting these girls on a plane so Cecile can see what she left behind. If she wants to see, let her get on an airplane and fly out to New York.

This is Big Ma’s ethic of moral accounting: the person who broke the family should shoulder the burden of repair. Her protective anger frames the trip as backwards justice, establishing Cecile’s abdication and Big Ma’s claim to motherhood.

It’s change she has no pity on. However things are stamped in Big Ma’s mind is how they will be, now and forever. Idlewild will never be JFK. Cassius Clay will never be Muhammad Ali. Cecile will never be anything other than Cecile.

The chain of renamings connects airports, athletes, and mothers—public history and private grievance. Big Ma treats names as anchors; to rename is to unsettle the order that keeps her family safe.

Even though Big Ma read her Scripture daily, she hadn’t considered forgiveness where Cecile was concerned. Cecile wasn’t what the Bible meant when it spoke of love and forgiveness. Only judgment, and believe me, Big Ma had plenty of judgment for Cecile.

Here, faith and forgiveness split. Big Ma’s religion is a moral vocabulary more than a practice of mercy when motherhood is at stake, explaining how Delphine inherits standards before she learns compassion.

“Delphine! Do you know how much this phone call is costing your father?”

Care sounds like a scolding, but the content is stewardship: Big Ma guards the family’s resources as a shield against vulnerability. Her love measures itself in bills paid and discipline kept.

“Scrub like you’re a gal from a one-cow town near Prattville, Alabama… Can’t have you dreaming out of your head and writing on the walls. That’ll only lead to ruin.”

Big Ma’s work ethic is a survival strategy born of scarcity. She mistrusts unfocused dreaming because, in her experience, imagination without order threatens the stability she’s fought to build.