Where the Crawdads Sing

by

Delia Owens

Ma (Kya’s Mother) Character Analysis

Kya’s mother, whom she calls Ma, is a middle-aged woman from New Orleans who at the outset of the novel lives in the marshlands of North Carolina with her husband and five children. When Ma first met her husband, whom Kya calls Pa, she thought he had more money than he actually did and was surprised when he eventually convinced her to move onto his family’s land in North Carolina, at which point she discovered that there was nothing there but a run-down shack. In the ensuing years, she suffered violent abuse, which is why she eventually leaves once and for all when Kya is only six years old, abandoning Kya and the rest of her children. More than a decade later, Kya learns from her brother Jodie that Ma was mentally unstable when she left home, hardly registering that she was leaving behind her children, since she was instinctively focused on trying to save her own life. Once Ma left, Jodie tells Kya, she went to live with her sister in New Orleans, where she remained cooped up in her bedroom, hardly able to speak. Roughly a year later, Ma came to her senses and realized that she’d left her children, but Pa refused to let her see them when she wrote a letter asking to do so. Instead, he threatened to hurt them if she ever tried to contact them again. For the rest of her days, then, Ma remained in New Orleans, devoting herself to creating oil paintings of her children—paintings that Jodie obtains and gives to Kya when he returns to the marsh after many years.

Ma (Kya’s Mother) Quotes in Where the Crawdads Sing

The Where the Crawdads Sing quotes below are all either spoken by Ma (Kya’s Mother) or refer to Ma (Kya’s Mother). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Survival, Necessity, and Violence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“A ma don’t leave her kids. It ain’t in ’em.”

“You told me that fox left her babies.”

“Yeah, but that vixen got ’er leg all tore up. She’d’ve starved to death if she’d tried to feed herself ’n’ her kits. She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good. Ma ain’t starvin’, she’ll be back.” Jodie wasn’t nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Jodie (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

A gnawing hunger—such a mundane thing—surprised her. She walked to the kitchen and stood at the door. All her life the room had been warmed from baking bread, boiling butter beans, or bubbling fish stew. Now, it was stale, quiet, and dark. “Who’s gonna cook?” she asked out loud. Could have asked, Who’s gonna dance?

She lit a candle and poked at hot ashes in the woodstove, added kin­dling. Pumped the bellows till a flame caught, then more wood.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Ma used to soak wounds in salt water and pack them with mud mixed with all kinds of potions. There was no salt in the kitchen, so Kya limped into the woods toward a brackish slipstream so salty at low tide, its edges glistened with brilliant white crystals. She sat on the ground, soaking her foot in the marsh’s brine, all the while moving her mouth: open, close, open, close, mocking yawns, chewing motions, anything to keep it from jamming up. After nearly an hour, the tide receded enough for her to dig a hole in the black mud with her fingers, and she eased her foot gently into the silky earth. The air was cool here, and eagle cries gave her bearing.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

Kya dropped her eyes as her whole body blushed. Of course, there’d been no Ma to tell her, but indeed a school booklet Tate had brought explained some. Now her time had come, and here she was sitting on the beach becoming a woman right in front of a boy. Shame and panic filled her. What was she supposed to do? What exactly would happen? How much blood would there be? She imagined it leaking into the sand around her. She sat silent as a sharp pain racked her middle.

"Can you get yourself home?” he asked, still not looking at her.

“I think so.”

“It’ll be okay, Kya. Every girl goes through this just fine. You go on home. I’ll follow way back to make sure you get there.”

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Tate (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother)
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

She knew from her studies that males go from one female to the next, so why had she fallen for this man? His fancy ski boat was the same as the pumped-up neck and outsized antlers of a buck deer in rut: appendages to ward off other males and attract one female after another. Yet she had fallen for the same ruse as Ma: […] sneaky fuckers.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Tate, Chase Andrews, Ma (Kya’s Mother)
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in what­ ever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.

“Maybe some primitive urge—some ancient genes, not appropriate anymore—drove Ma to leave us because of the stress, the horror and real danger of living with Pa. That doesn’t make it right; she should have chosen to stay. But knowing that these tendencies are in our bio­ logical blueprints might help one forgive even a failed mother. That may explain her leaving, but I still don’t see why she didn’t come back.”

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 238
Explanation and Analysis:
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Where the Crawdads Sing PDF

Ma (Kya’s Mother) Quotes in Where the Crawdads Sing

The Where the Crawdads Sing quotes below are all either spoken by Ma (Kya’s Mother) or refer to Ma (Kya’s Mother). For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Survival, Necessity, and Violence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“A ma don’t leave her kids. It ain’t in ’em.”

“You told me that fox left her babies.”

“Yeah, but that vixen got ’er leg all tore up. She’d’ve starved to death if she’d tried to feed herself ’n’ her kits. She was better off to leave ’em, heal herself up, then whelp more when she could raise ’em good. Ma ain’t starvin’, she’ll be back.” Jodie wasn’t nearly as sure as he sounded, but said it for Kya.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Jodie (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

A gnawing hunger—such a mundane thing—surprised her. She walked to the kitchen and stood at the door. All her life the room had been warmed from baking bread, boiling butter beans, or bubbling fish stew. Now, it was stale, quiet, and dark. “Who’s gonna cook?” she asked out loud. Could have asked, Who’s gonna dance?

She lit a candle and poked at hot ashes in the woodstove, added kin­dling. Pumped the bellows till a flame caught, then more wood.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

Ma used to soak wounds in salt water and pack them with mud mixed with all kinds of potions. There was no salt in the kitchen, so Kya limped into the woods toward a brackish slipstream so salty at low tide, its edges glistened with brilliant white crystals. She sat on the ground, soaking her foot in the marsh’s brine, all the while moving her mouth: open, close, open, close, mocking yawns, chewing motions, anything to keep it from jamming up. After nearly an hour, the tide receded enough for her to dig a hole in the black mud with her fingers, and she eased her foot gently into the silky earth. The air was cool here, and eagle cries gave her bearing.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

Kya dropped her eyes as her whole body blushed. Of course, there’d been no Ma to tell her, but indeed a school booklet Tate had brought explained some. Now her time had come, and here she was sitting on the beach becoming a woman right in front of a boy. Shame and panic filled her. What was she supposed to do? What exactly would happen? How much blood would there be? She imagined it leaking into the sand around her. She sat silent as a sharp pain racked her middle.

"Can you get yourself home?” he asked, still not looking at her.

“I think so.”

“It’ll be okay, Kya. Every girl goes through this just fine. You go on home. I’ll follow way back to make sure you get there.”

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Tate (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother)
Page Number: 119
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

She knew from her studies that males go from one female to the next, so why had she fallen for this man? His fancy ski boat was the same as the pumped-up neck and outsized antlers of a buck deer in rut: appendages to ward off other males and attract one female after another. Yet she had fallen for the same ruse as Ma: […] sneaky fuckers.

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark), Tate, Chase Andrews, Ma (Kya’s Mother)
Page Number: 212
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“It happens in humans, too. Some behaviors that seem harsh to us now ensured the survival of early man in what­ ever swamp he was in at the time. Without them, we wouldn’t be here. We still store those instincts in our genes, and they express themselves when certain circumstances prevail. Some parts of us will always be what we were, what we had to be to survive—way back yonder.

“Maybe some primitive urge—some ancient genes, not appropriate anymore—drove Ma to leave us because of the stress, the horror and real danger of living with Pa. That doesn’t make it right; she should have chosen to stay. But knowing that these tendencies are in our bio­ logical blueprints might help one forgive even a failed mother. That may explain her leaving, but I still don’t see why she didn’t come back.”

Related Characters: Kya (Catherine Danielle Clark) (speaker), Ma (Kya’s Mother), Jodie, Pa (Kya’s Father)
Page Number: 238
Explanation and Analysis: