Big Mama's Funeral (original Spanish-language title: Los funerales de la Mamá Grande), a long short story, is a satirical commentary on Latin American life and culture by Gabriel García Márquez. Most of the place names mentioned come from Colombia. It displays the exaggeration associated with magic realism. "Big Mama" herself is an exaggeration of the 'cacique' (political boss), a familiar figure in Latin American history and tradition; the term itself comes from a Native American word for a tribal chief.
Big Mama's funeral is mentioned in Marquez's famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude soon after Melquiades' death, an example of Marquez's tendency to tie together his literary works.
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Famous quotes containing the words big, mama and/or funeral:
“O, pluck was he to the backbone and clear grit through and through;
Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn’t do;
The boy was dying, sir, dying, as plain as plain could be,
Worn out by his ride with Morgan up from the Tennessee.”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)
“My Mama has made bread
and Grampaw has come
and everybody is drunk
and dancing in the kitchen”
—Lucille Clifton (b. 1936)
“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)