How would some other setting affect the story if at all?

The rurual Southern setting is important to the themes and tone of the story. The setting represents a poor black agricultural lifestyle. The values mama has are very much connected with the poverty and subsistence living that Mama has endured.

I can kill and clean a hog as mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake.

A different setting would not accurately represent Mama and the thematic context of the story.