I know that my ancestors were Dutch. I’m proud that my ancestors were Dutch, and if I don’t observe I at least understand some of the facets of Dutch culture and tradition. I am privileged to do so. But while we white people know our heritage and are quick to point out the nuances of it, of what peoples and practices we are descended from, a high number of black people around the world don’t have that. Because slave traders didn’t keep records of where in Africa their slaves came from and when, their descendants haven’t the luxury of that ancestral cultural understanding. For so many African-Americans, their history begins with slavery, because whatever came before has been long wiped away by the evils of colonialism. What cultures, languages, beliefs, and folklore have been lost? What have the descendants of slaves been anthropologically deprived of?
Earlier this month I wrote about Welcome II the TerrorDome -which in several instances evokes the Igbo Landing: the historical mass suicide that took place in 1803 when a ship-full of ethnically Igbo prisoners revolted and walked into the waters off the coast of Georgia to drown rather than submit to slavery. And I was reminded writing that piece of the one other reference point I had for that episode.
 |
Daughters of the Dust is a 1991 independent film by Julie Dash, the first theatrically released movie in the United States written and directed by a black woman; and it is an astonishing work of cinema! It is the story of an extended family, specifically the women, living on an island off the coast of Georgia, where they have dwelt for generations, and are now in 1902 considering a permanent migration to the mainland. More honestly though it is a movie about the Gullah people and the rich history and culture traced all the way back to Africa through oral and linguistic tradition that they have cultivated in these isolated pockets of the southeastern United States.
 |
The movie is extremely dedicated to an authentic portrait of this serene little world and its’ denizens. Everyone speaks in Gullah Creole, a linguistic melting pot of various West African dialects and English –though not always comprehensible, it’s a very soothing, very poetic language. The whole movie is poetic in fact, Dash shooting the film with an eye for aesthetics more than plot, cutting every so often to girls in white dresses dancing on an endless beach or interrupting a scene to focus on some background figure or tradition. Late in the film, she looks to a ritual effigy of an Igbo slave floating along the banks of the island in honour of the ancestors who may have walked on the water or become part of it to escape their captors. Such imagery and such spirituality are the soul of Daughters of the Dust, which have transcended their experimental art film connotations to the point of even being referenced by Beyonce throughout her 2016 album Lemonade –which did renew substantive attention for this forgotten classic.
 |
The characters are very fascinating too, portrayed by a cast of obscure actors from the world of black independent film and theatre -each with their own connection to their heritage and feelings about leaving the island. They are the Peazant family. There’s Viola (Cheryl Lynne Bruce), returning from Philadelphia now a passionate Christian, along with her bohemian cousin Yellow Mary (Barbara-O), both experienced with and ingratiated by the outside world, though in starkly different ways. Eula (Alva Rogers), whose experience there was tainted by rape, carries a child who may not be her husband Eli’s (Adisa Anderson) –both uncertain about migration. In contrast, Aunt Haagar (Kaycee Moore), who like Eula married into the family, couldn’t be more eager to leave, disillusioned by the old ways and impatient to embrace a new world and culture. Yet her daughter Iona (Bahni Turpin) is far more determined to stay, in love with a young Cherokee man who works on the island. Watching over all of them are the two most powerful figures: wise withered matriarch Nana (Cora Lee Day), keeper of the Gullah traditions and the family history, and the unborn daughter (voiced by Kay-Lynn Warren) of Eula and Eli, looking back on and occasionally inserting herself into that life of her forebears that was left behind while she keeps their stories alive. They are respectively as Nana puts it, “the last of the old, the first of the new”.
 |
The Gullah aren’t commonly known in American culture, or any predominantly white culture really. Daughters of the Dust was for me as I imagine it must have been for many, an introduction to this fascinating people and their history. And that really shouldn’t be the case. Because the Gullah represent a very unique place in the many-faceted mosaic of the African diaspora. They were slaves who didn’t fully succumb to the cultural eradication of their white captors, who were able to hold on to their heritage and develop something distinct out of it. It’s an amazing thing, this segment of black America whose history doesn’t begin with slavery. Julie Dash, whose father was Gullah and his family story a model for Daughter of the Dust, saw how incredible and inspiring that was, but also how obscured. And so she devotes large parts of the movie to simply basking in that world -with the women making meals or weaving baskets or just creating, with that aforementioned Igbo totem that drifts in the water as Eula narrates the significance of the Igbo Landing essentially straight to the audience. The film features two outsider characters: Mr. Snead (Tommy Hicks) a photographer who has come with Viola to document the family, and Trula (Trula Hoosier), Yellow Mary’s curious, faithful lover. A lesser movie, one more opaquely intended for white audiences, would have made them point-of-view characters if not outright protagonists. But Dash has them just be mere outsiders, and doesn’t compromise the focus of her story for the sake of accessibility. That’s also the reason she chose not to use subtitles, preferring just to let the language be and rely on its’ effect over audiences, whether they can follow it fully or not. Because she clearly intended the film to be a testament, as well as a story, to these people and their way of life. And she does so beautifully with reverence and pathos while also interrogating notions of culture and one’s relationship to it.
 |
Everyone in the Peazant family has a different outlook on where they came from and where they want to go. Stay in the serenity of the island and adhere to the old traditions or venture out into a new modern world that seems to have evolved without their knowing -or at least that’s the impression the film gives in the anachronisms between the humble secluded Gullah home and the spectre of industrial civilization. Each choice in this regard speaks to the particular values placed by that individual on their history and way of life. The polar opposites are seemingly Nana and Haagar, respectively the most rooted and most stifled by their environment. Haagar sees only limitations in Gullah identity and history, she believes the world has passed them by and they must catch up, and is rather passionate about this. To her, culture isn’t a necessity, in fact it can be a dead weight. It’s a sentiment not shared by her daughter who ultimately chooses to stay -for love over tradition though. Culture merely brought her into contact with him. For Viola, culture is interchangeable -though she doesn’t reject it as hard as Haagar, she has already given up the Gullah traditions and adopted Christian ones in their place, and seeks that for her family as well. Eula and Eli are the moderates, reverent and appreciative but sceptical and curious -they are at a crossroads between staying and leaving. Ultimately they are too bound up in keeping alive the spirit of the Gullah to make the leap.
 |
And then there’s Yellow Mary with maybe the most fascinating relationship to her culture -the only one to substantially evolve, as having abandoned it she comes back to rediscover it and amidst her cynicism embrace it once again. Hers is a heritage she took for granted until Nana’s sympathies brought back its’ significance. And Nana, as much as her life is lived within this old world and its’ ways, is not conservative about the culture, and as to the question of leaving the island, she passes no judgment on those who do -she merely asks that they remember who they are and where they came from. She illustrates this symbolically through bringing together a Bible and a ritual talisman to link them spiritually, which initially offends Viola, though she soon accepts Nana’s sincerity, while Haagar obstinately refuses to understand. For Nana, culture is not something that can be whittled away or replaced, but it can be something that grows, and can encompass new ways, new traditions, so long as the old are respected.
 |
That is the stance of the movie itself and especially towards Gullah culture specifically, from the vantage point of a director all too aware that it is endangered. Daughters of the Dust is an artefact of preservation. It lives in and celebrates Gullah culture and history not merely as a narrative or aesthetic device, but as a purposeful documentarian one. Dash made the film a snapshot of a lifestyle and period in time that could easily have been lost –Gullah custom is based in oral tradition after all. The history we’re brought up with is already pretty exclusionary of black experience, the myriad of black identity and culture. Again, how many are taught at all about the Igbo Landing? If not preserved and honoured, these touchstones, these peoples could fade away. So Nana stresses the importance for her descendants to remember, carry on the history as they venture into a world that would more readily forget it. “I’m trying to give you something to take north with you,” she says. “Along with all your great big dreams.” Dash, as one of those descendants, heeded those words and she took her responsibility seriously. Film is an incredible medium of cultural preservation –it is the consummate art form and thus the consummate means of keeping culture and history alive. It’s why initiatives like Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are so vital, why movies like Daughters of the Dust are. And there are so many more cultures and traditions, so many more histories in the world still untouched, even just within the African diaspora. Will their stories be remembered by film? Will their stories endure?
 |
“We stay behind on this island, growing older, wiser, stronger”. This last statement spoken by Eula and Eli’s enigmatic daughter is a proud conservationist dictum and Dash’s reverent tribute to the act of cultural preservation. It doesn’t judge or dismiss those who chose to leave, but it recognizes the sacrifice and immense integrity to go on in the lifestyle of the ancestors, to at least ensure it survives another generation. It’s poignant and beautiful and is one of the many reasons Daughters of the Dust is so special. A movie that renews and keeps alive the spirit and heritage of the Gullah people, determined not to lose them to the white supremacist scourge of black history and culture. One of the most important black films ever made.
Happy Black History Month!
Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment