“The Persistence of Tradition” The Retelling of Sea Islands Culture in Works by Julie Dash, Gloria Naylor, and Paule MarshaII

Abstract

Abstract Before the Civil War, the Sea Islands off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina were one of the last areas in the United States to see a continued arrival of Africans who had illegally been transported to the United States to be sold as slaves. The last ship on record to have “imported” African captives is the slave ship, the Wanderer, which brought a cargo of 400 Africans to Jekyll Island, Georgia, in 1858, fifty-one years after the importation of Africans as slaves had been banned in 1807.1 Julie Dash refers to the Islands as a “reverse Ellis Island” for the African slaves.2 Isolated from the mainland, the Sea Island Gullahs, descendants of African captives, here “created and maintained a distinct, imaginative, and original African American Culture” (Making 27). In other words, the Sea Islands, as a U.S. geographical area, retain strong rural African cultural traditions. The Sea Islands, according to Dash, represent a greater degree of genuine cultural syncretism of African and American culture than that found anywhere else in the United States. Once a “reverse Ellis Island” to the African slaves, the Islands today have been reversed again into a more positive cultural “bridge” to Africa by such African American artists as Gloria Naylor and Paule Marshall, who use the rich Sea Island heritage in Mama Day and Praisesong for the Widow, respectively, as well as by filmmaker Julie Dash, who has made the feature film, Daughters of the Dust.