Mother-Daughter Bond in "A Yellow Raft in Blue Water"

Motherhood begins from the moment a woman conceives. The mother and the child have an immediate bond. The ability to create life and bring it into the world is magical and it changes the woman emotionally, physically and mentally. An example of a remarkable mother-daughter bond in history would be that of the Native American women and their daughters. In A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris, the bonds between the three main characters, Rayona, Christine and Ida is a complete contrast to that of the Native American women.

The first part of the story begins with Rayona’s point of view. She is a fifteen year old girl, who is half black and half Native American. Rayona’s mother, Christine is an alcoholic and is extremely sick because of it. She makes immature decisions and Rayona is forced to tag along. Christine and Rayona do not communicate they are completely different from each other. Christine runs away from her problems whereas Rayona tries to solve them. One example is in the novel where Christine decides to leave Seattle and return to her former reservation. When they arrive, Aunt Ida, Christine’s mother, is upset to see her there, thus Christine runs off and Rayona chases after her because she has a longing for her love. Upset by the fact that her mother left with no reason, she looks at the ground and hates it. She calls it ugly and to get rid of it she pulls at it in frustration while thinking, “No matter how much I pull there’s more. I will never clean it all and yet I can’t stop” (Dorris 32).Here, The dirt symbolizes the ugliness of Rayona’s life and how much she wants to clean it up but it will never be cleaned.

Christine’s behavior towards Rayona is anything but motherly. She is an alcoholic pill popper wh...

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...da’s, Christine’s, and Rayona’s individual stories” (Roby64). Their stories correlate with each other which keep them together in a bond so strong they themselves can not separate. Ida ends the novel with a stunning statement about their stories calling their lives, “three strands, the whispers of coming and going, of twisting and tying and bending, of catching and of letting go, of braiding”(Dorris372).

Although their relationships are not exactly what the Native American women would consider ideal, it is enforced with love. Ida, Christine, and Rayona each struggle with something different because they have different personalities. But through their differences comes a similarity, love, which ultimately bonds these three women as a whole. They are three Native American women whose lives braid into each other that create this bond that is absolutely beautiful.