Daughters of the Dust (1991) ANNA EVERETT Toward a Womanist/Diasporic Film Aesthetic Context When Julie Dash defied the odds by getting Daughters of the Dust funded, produced, distributed, and finally exhibited in mainstream film theaters and later on television, she achievement signaled in a powerful way that “independent Black cinema had come of age” (Bambara xiv). Not surprisingly, Dash was immediately compared to that mercurial independent filmmaker par excellence, Spike Lee. For here was an audacious, uncompromising, and determined young black woman filmmaker who refused to be deterred by the fact that every major Hollywood studio rejectec the film on the grounds that it was not commercial enough to support financially and not familiar enough for audiences to embrace emotionally. Like Lee, Dash was trained at one of the nation’s premiere film schools—UCLA, in her case—and she also trained for a time at the ‘American Film Institute (AFD. Like Lee, Dash was able to realize her dream of creating a highly “personal film” (as she put it) that ultimately gamered both commercial and critical success. And like Lee's early films, Dash’s Daughters owes much of its visual power to the virtuosity of its director of cinematography, Arthur Jafa (AJ) (Bambara xv). Simi larly, both Lee's and Dash’s first films are marked by highly stylized and experimental formal structures—an avant-garde sensibility. ‘The similitude ends there. Although both Lee's and Dash’s first feature-length films are tales centered around the black woman, Dash’s film, unlike Lee’s She's Gotta Have It (1986), is narrativized and focalized from a black woman's perspective. Questions involv- ing the politics of representation and gender differences were also in play more broadly with the release of Dash's film, as Daughiters be- came a standout amid the new cycle of black films during the 1990s 851Everett in light of the dominance of black male directors and masculinist dis- courses at the heart ofthis trend. Male-directed films such as Bo ‘he Hood (fohn Singleton, 1991), A Rage in Harlem (Bill Duke, 1991) ‘Straight out of Brooklyn (Matty Rich, 1991), New Jack City (Mario Van Peebles, 1991), Deep Cover (Duke, 1992), and Juice (Ernest R. Dicker- son, 1952), among others, exemplify this masculin-focused, post. pena cyele of popular urban black films easily embraced by Ed Guerrero has described these films of urban decay and blight in terms of an ethos that he’s dubbed “ghettocentricity” (186). Whereas these “ghettoceniric” masculinist films are primarily pessimistic de- Pictions of black communities devastated by “the pressures of ghetto life” (178), Dash’s film proffers a more cautiously optimistic portrayal of black feminist survival. As Guerrero puts it, “Daughters of the Dust pointedly sets out to reconstruct, to recover a sense of black women’s history, and to affirm their cultural and politcal space in the expand- ing arena of black cinema production” (175). Production Background Inever planned a career as a filmmaker... None ofthe images saw of African American people, especially the women, sug- gested that we could actually make movies. We were rarely even in them, (Dash, “Daughters” 1) There is perhaps one more similarity between Spike Lee and Julie ‘Making of “Do the Right Thing” (1989), Dash’s “Daughters ofthe Dust": The Making of an African American Woman's Film (1992) similarly fune. tions as a sort of user’s guide for her film. The book’s useful behind- the-scenes details do not merely document the ten-year ordeal she endured to get the cinematic idea and ideal from her imagination onto the screen. They also provide pertinent information that aids specta- tors in deciphering many of the film’s highly symbolic and “culturally Specific” codiications. To better understand the breakthrough signifi sae get Deshler he Dist tisimportantto consider ey aspects of film’ production history and backgroun sh divul herbookandin posal inary net Da deigsin 852 z Daughters of the Dust In her instructive and well-informed preface to Dash’s book, Toni Cade Bambara notes that shortly after ts release, Daughters enjoyed a cult status. Bambara adds, “It is not urseasonable to predict that it will shortly achieve the status it deserves—classic.... Perhaps, finally with the breakthrough of Daughters into the theatrical circuit, new audi ences are developing for the culturally-specific works of filmmakers, producers, directors, and videographers within community media, public television, the independent sector, and the commercial indus- try” (Bambara xvi). Indeed, Daughters eventually achieved unantici- pated success, beyond what I call the “prestige ghettos” of film festivals, art-house film circuits, museum venues, and elite university audiences. Moreover, Dash achieved this on her own terms, with both integrity and tenacity. As a result, Daughters received tremendous re- sponses at film-festivals across the globe in 1991, culminating in Sun- dance's Best Cinematography award for Arthur Jafa (Brouwer 13). Irrespective of these accolades, Daughters languished for a year with- out a distribution deal (Guerrero 177). Its telling that Dash was un- able to parlay her successes on the prestige film-festival circuit into a lucrative film distribution deal with the big studios. By contrast, that same year, novice filmmaker Matty Rich won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance for his film Straigitt out of Brooklyn, which was snapped up for distribution by Samuel Goldwyn (178). Perhaps the difference in the reception of these two films by Holly- ‘wood’s patriarchal establishment can te attributed to gender politics Dash has asserted, “most white men don’t want to be a black woman for two hours” (qtd. in Guerrero 177). However, itis equally important to bear in mind Guerrero’s observation that the popular black film au- dience is largely a youth market, habituated to violent, formulaic ac- tion-adventure films. Expectedly then, Daughters’ ability to appeal to this demographic would be limited. Notwithstanding such a formida- ble limitation, Daughters’ surprising resilience and profitability hinged on its unmitigated success with a sizable middle-class black female demographic, which constituted the film's primary audience (Brouwer 13). Jacqueline Bobo reminds us that Daughters was “not simply a tale of black women reclaiming their past. As a work deliber- ately conceived as a film about black women, with black women in- tended as its primary audience, it intervenes strongly in a tradition of 853Everett derogatory porayals of black women in dominant cinema’ (165). Itis true that Daughters challenges and reimages portrayals of black ‘women, but Dash’s film also intervenes in historic portrayals of black life in general in terms of how both genders would have experienced the horrific system of slavery. Iam arguing that Dauglters’ critical re- sponse to the racial oppression of both black women and black men and to black men’s phallocentric constructions of black women posi- tions it as a prototypical “womanist” film text. Daughters can be con- sidered a womanist text because it not only denounces white racism and patriarchy; t also “assumes that it can talk effectively and produc- tively about mer” (Williams 70) According tc Sherley Anne Williams, productive talk about black ‘men that encompasses a trenchant critique of their negative, stereotyp- ical, and *‘phallocentric’ constructions of the black female image" is a key feature of womanist critiques. At the same time, womanist criti- cism takes in its purview black men’s constructions of themselves (70) Viewed as a countemarrative to the popular films compromised by sexist constructions of black women, Daughters functions as a woman- ist film text that complements the highly regarded literary output of such womanist authors as Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison. Like these black women writers, Dash understands too well how the “corruption wroughtby slavery” continues to undermine gen- der relations within the black community (71). Daughters, then, is a powerful cinematic treatise on the persistence of African cultural tradi- tions, rituals, and values in the black community that includes a restoration of loving and compassionate gender relations between black men and women in the aftermath of slavery’s destructions. Dash also uncerstood too well the difficulties of attracting large au- diences to yet another painful story about slavery’s degradations. Her aim was to clefamiliarize the story of slavery to such an extent that au- diences would have to engage with it differently, to see it with fresh eyes. Drawing on specific memories and stories from her family his- tory that were grounded in the history of slavery, Dash became inter- ested in telling her family’s origins from within the Sea Islands culture off the coast of South Carolina. Though family stories inspired the film, she reveals in her book her surprise at her family members’ new- found reluctance to discuss their histories in South Carolina or their 854 Daughters of the Dust gration to New York. Perhaps the idea of painful family stories writ tell the story and create images that would “touch an audience the it touched my family” (5) "hrf ell novel sony abt sve an sitions the story right by imbuing it with historically authentic details, Srchcmberfadsma daunng esearch agenda ht included hours of research at the nation’s premiere archives of black history. Among the ‘numerous archival institutions that she culled for factual data were New York’s Shomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, in Harlem, and the National Archives and the Library of Congress, both in Washington, D.C. (Dash, “Daughters” 5). Dash elaborated further on the significance of her research findings in a videotaped interview at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995, Dash explained her passion for the subject matter of Daugiters and her decision to use the South Carolina Gullah dialect in this way: My family comes from the Sea Islands area, and they spoke like that. I started doing research on that whole region when T ‘was at UCLA. The Sea Islands represents Ellis Island for us; that is where the slave ships came in. That is our Elis Island. It is sacred ground for us, Why was this particular microcosm of the African American slavery culture different from slavery in Mississippi or Alabama? It is because they were 80 isolated. Why on these islands [where] there was so much yellow fever? ‘The sickle cel trait helped the West Africans survive ‘malaria [although they were] Klledin the end. tis a heavy ‘of African resistance, There was much to mine there. Mining this particular aspect of African resistance to slavery, Dash found “the existence of over sixty thousand West African words or phrases in use in the English language” that were “a direct result of the slave trade” ("Daughters” 5). Her discovery and incorporation of such words are among the many examples of “authentic” historical facts that aided in the preparation of Daughters of the Dust's com- pelling narrative. This wealth of information convinced Dash that only a feature-length film could do the subject matter the justice it 855Everett commanded. In 1985, she realized that “a short film would not be large enough for the story. I knew I would have to make a feature. ‘There was too much information, and it had to be shared” (6). Sharing her newfound vision proved more frustrating than she imagined given the new trend in Hollywood to capitalize on what Dash has termed “urban testosterone films” (Interview). Armed with her script, revised numerous times to present what she thought was a novel take on the slavery episode, Dash sought financing for her film. After pitching her concept to numerous unreceptive production com- panies, Dash realized the need to “shoot an example of the film” be- cause it was an ““untraditional’ black movie” ("‘Daughters” 6-7). It was untraditional for studio executives in Hollywood because it did not feature characters living in urban ghettos, “killing each other and burn- ing things down,” and it was devoid of “explicit sex scenes” (8). Dash found litle difference in the reception from potential European film backers who either did not understand the film, thought it too typically American, or thoaght it too radical for their audiences to grasp. Ultimately, major financial backing forthe film came from the Pub- lic Broadcasting System’s American Playhouse, the Rockefeller Foun- dation, the National Black Programming Consortium, and smaller investors. In addition to scraping together a budget of approximately '$800,000, Dash succeeded in securing the independent New York dis- tributor Kino Inlemational. Dash credits Kino's wisdom to hire an African American publicity firm, KJM3_ Entertainment Group, for the film’s impressive publicity campaign when it finally opened to sold- out crowds at the Film Korum in New York on January 15, 1992 (“Daughters” 25-26). Daughters replicated this feat of unexpected box- office success at most theaters where it screened in spite of its limited release “on a staggered schedule throughout 1992.” In fact, Daughters’ success is all the more remarkable because a staggered schedule during an initial release is understood widely as the kiss of death for main- stream and independent films alike, as they often are “pulled before the audience has a chance to find them” (26). Still, Daughters’ striking box-office draw was buoyed by word-of-mouth advertising, which sustained it beyond the crucial make-or-break opening-weekend stan- dard (Bobo 168). Despite its relegation to only one or two screens per market, Daughters consistently sold out, even requiring extra screen- ings. Jacqueline Bobo points out that at one point “Daugliters ofthe Dust 856 Daughters of the Dust had the highest per-screen average for the week, beating such films as ‘The Hand that Rocks The Cradle, Fried Green Tomatoes, Father ofthe Bride and Grand Canyon (168). Clearly confounding expectations, Daughters hhad become the little film that could. Analysis Daughters ofthe Dust was not universally embraced, however. Interest- ingly, criticisms that the film encountered on its release were contra- dictory. On the one hand, there were charges claiming that the film essentially played “like a two-hour Laura Ashley commercial” (Guer- rero 177). On the other hand, Daughters was deemed too demanding and idiosyncratic for audiences to grasp. Worse still, the film was ‘missed in Hollywood because such a film had never been done before (Brouwer 12-13). The fact that Dash tad intentionally broken with ‘mainstream filmmaking approaches that too often reduce the com- plexities of black life to homogenized, ready-made film commodities apparently was lost on most critics who reviewed the film for the pop- ular press. In the years since the film’s initial release, many academic critics have drawn on published interviews with Dash as a means of ‘demystifying many of Daughters’ seemingly arcane symbolisms and its culturally specific and visually complex representations. In the 1995 interview cited earlier, Desh confronted several miscon- ceptions about the demanding nature of Daughters, First, regarding the film’s putative lack of structure, she emphasized several points: (1) Daughters pays homage to another film, Ganja and Hess (1973), by black filmmaker Bill Gunn. (2) The film has a firm structure, with a definite beginning, middle, and end. (3) Her geal was “to tell the story as an African griot would, with an unfolding, like women’s weaving.” (4) The film employs a flash-forward structural approach that best suited her vision of the film. (5) “Daughters is rot plot driven,” Dash stresses. “Las heavily influenced by foreign films... There are passages from the film that stay with you forever. Sirce [Daughters] is film about family, I wanted to doa film that was lice an heirloom itself. I wanted to create these tableaux images like frescos in your mind. . .. 1 was going for the visual impact. ... most of the shots are tableaux.” (6) Jafa experimented with Daughters’ film speed. He used a computer capable of manipulating the film speed from between 24, 40, and 60 frames per 857Everett second. (7) Ultimately, Daughters is a work of “speculative fiction, it’s a science fiction story—a what-if story.” As Dash puts it, “I wanted to do 2 voudoun [erroneously termed “voodoo"| film without zombies, and I did.” This last remark leads us to Daughters’ more accurate represen- {ations of African disaporic cultural traditions. Second, Dash explained the flm’s many allusions and references to African disaporic cultural traditions and symbols: (1) The Gullah di- alect ofthe films characters reflects the dislocated Africans’ retention of remnants or “scraps” of their Gambian and Senegambian language heritage. Dash tells the audience, “I wanted it to be in the Gullah di- lect. English words are spoken with an African syntax and cadence. You hear English, but the grammatical placement is more African than English. So you really have to listen” to appreciate the “Senegambian and Gambian” irfluences, for example. (2) African American jazz and blues tonalities were strong influences on Daughters’ visual aesthetic. Dash elaborates on the musical influences: ‘We wanted the music to transcend the visuals in some way. We wanted it to reflect the New World realities that these people ‘were experiencing during the Middle Passage. ... What music ‘would they have heard? A Santeria priest sang and played per- ccussion for the film and women sang songs that were never heard on film before. It was emotional music. (3) America’s “miscegenation taboo” and its concomitant “color- struck” problematic in Daughters are signified by Yellow Mary's name, ‘Trula’s very fair complexion, and Eula’s rape by a white plantation overseer.' For Dash, Yellow Mary's name and Trula‘s “yellow” skin color are significant indeed. Although Yellow Mary's skin tone is fairer than that of her Peazant family relatives, her lover Trula's is fairer still This conscious choice in casting the “yellow” characters was impor- tant for Dash to foreground the “the relativity of the term,” which is used to designate black people's fair skin tones while calling attention ‘The hypocrisy of laws that prohibited interracial unions is often revealed by the so-called colorstruck phenomenon, wherein fair-skinned blacks (the product of race mixing between white slave masters and their black women chattel) are con sidered simultaneously desirable and repulsive by both blacks and whites, 858 : Daughters of the Dust to the white-skin privilege that accrues to it. (4) W. E, B. DuBois’s po- tent concept of “double-consciousness” is another important African ‘American theme in Daughters. Of all the characters in the film, Yellow Mary, who isin voluntary exile from the mainland, embodies this con- cept most. Dash comments, “As African Americans, we've learned to constantly translate. We speak one way in public. We speak another way at home. We are constantly translating emotions, dialects, all of that. But everyone else has not been forved to do that.” The fact that black people's everyday survival depencs on their successful negotia- tion of black and white cultural norms is at the heart of DuBois's double-consciousness concept, and it contributes to Yellow Mary's alienation from the racist demands of the mainland. {A third issue of importance in Daughters deals with the film’s focus on black women. Clearly, the film’s title elone announces its womanist orientation: The film’s title is a rewriting of a biblical passage that Dash changed from “sons of the dust,” to “daughters of the dust.” ‘This is not Dash’s only rewriting, Daughters’ counterhegemonic dis- course was motivated by Dash’s desire ty rewrite cinematic images of black women and break completely with traditional film stereotypes. Inher book, Dash confesses that both she and Jafa were “on a mission to redefine how black women look on the screen and what they're doing” (52). Judging from criticisms of the film’s supposed “Laura “Ashley” commercial look, they apparently succeeded. Daughters refo- ccuses traditional cinema’s distorted gaze by crafting some of the most beautifully compelling images of black women of all skin tones and hues (Bambara xiv). Most important, however, the film disrupts and rewrites popular cinematic portrayals of black female victimization with a counterhegemonic narrative focas on black women’s power and agency. Despite its strong womanist treatment, “This film is not so much matriarchal as it reflects my decision to position the film from the point of view of the women” (Dash, Interview). Bambara sums up Dash’s project as a fitting and long overdue answer to singer Abby Lincoln's question, “Who will revere the black woman?” Bambara writes, “Dash composes a woman validation ceremony within a film that has already assured the black woman spectator that we are not, as usual, going to be mugged in the dark” (xv). Issues four and five center on spectatorial positioning in Daughters and certain audience responses to the film as Dash described them in 859Everett her 1995 interview. It is difficult to improve on Dash’s own commen tary as she con‘extualizes matters of spectatorship and the reception of her film. First, she discusses the centrality of the character Trula, Yellow Mary’s implied lover, who is silent throughout the film. Trula’s silence serves a pivotal function. Dash explains: “Trula was the vehicle used to represent the audience. This is why she does not speak. She is like the audience—she does not understand the dialect [nor] the reli- gion. Trula witnesses Nana Peazant making a talisman. She runs away, signifying the West's tendency of fearing and refusing to know something that is not familiar” Dash also talks of how differently Eu- ropean and American audiences received Daughters. Dash begins by situating the film’s positive reception in Europe following a wave of Popularity for African American films (Hollywood and independent ‘ones) in Europe from 1979 to 1986. Dash refuses to speak for European audiences, but her successes there had a profound impact: can’t speak for them. I can’t say how they saw me or us [oth black filmmakers. In Europe thre ae So many ferent countries, with people who speak many different languages and cultures They find the work more acesble bene hey are not put off by a Geechee [or Gullah] dialect. They are not Put off by en African American tradition that they’ve never seen before on television, They just ask you about it. They Watch it and study it, whereas in the States, people tend to re- sent information that they didn’t know beforehand but should have: It’s like, “Wait a minute, What is this? I have not seen it on 60 Minutes it doesn't exis.” We need to start learning about other cultures. Dash is getting atthe need for American audiences especially to cult- vate an understanding and appreciation of other cultures despite the interpretive work and effort this might ental. She makes the point by describing her own experience grappling with one such unfamiliar film text that nonetheless gives her great spectatorial pleasure: In this country, we tend to operate from the position of privi- lege in the sense of knowing it all... and not being tolerant of other tongues and dialects as much as other people who come : Daughters of the Dust in contact with different dialects and tongues. For example, as fn African American growing up in New York City, [had to come to understand the Irish American, Chinese American, Scottish American, and Italian American, all of that. To this day, Milles Crossing [1990] is one of my favorite films, But when I watch the tape, Thave to rewind back because they are speaking in the slang from the period as well a this Irish ac- cent that I do not understand. They can go through an entire passage and I don’t know a word that is said. This personal anecdote is revealing of Dash’s penchant for indulging, cinematic complexity as both a spectator and filmmaker. As some crit- ies have pointed out, Daughters “isa ‘demanding’ film’ for spectators, which opens up narratively to a varying range of interpretations (Brouwer 12), but this passage makes it clear that she only demands from an audience what she herself is willing give. Myth versus Fiction By now it should be clear that Daughters of the Dust does not reside easily in filmdom’s traditional generic categories or accepted sub- xgenre hybrids, because its African diasporic cultural specificities and aesthetic sensibilities require different evaluative criteria. Perhaps bell hooks’s comparison of Daughters to a “mythopoetic” aesthetic shared by such postcolonial writers as Michael Ondaatje and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha comes closest to an acceptable positioning of the film. Ac cording to hooks, this aesthetic means “bringing certain factual infor- ‘mation into a kind of mythopoetic context” (qtd. in Dash, “Daughters” 28). Dash accepts this mythopoetic rubric because it accommodates her film’s speculative fiction or “what if” scenario, as she calls it. Dash reminds hooks that, “Myth, of course, plays a very important part in all our lives, in everyone's culture. Without myth and tradition,” she asks, “what is there?” (29). It is to Dash’s effective and seamless incorporation of African ‘Americans’ historically factual experiences of slavery into a com- pling fictional film narrative that we now turn. In fact, Dash has re- marked on the discomfiting realization that many people base their historical knowledge on cinematic depictions. For such people, Dash ‘observed, “History is on the screen. History is not from the textbook.” 861Everett Dash, however, distinguishes her project by affirming the fact that Daughters’ historical base does not depend “on the whim of the pro- duction designer” (Interview). Instead, she based her creative treat- ment of specific historical facts about slavery on her own painstaking historical research. In this way, Daughters might be said to possess a documentary effect, as its docudrama-style mythopoetics are consis- tent with John Grierson’s documentary tradition, which celebrates the ‘creative treatmert of actuality. For Dash, it was important to tell a different story of slavery, one that considers the facts and fictions of slavery but from a heroic sur- vivalist perspective rich in symbolic significance. Among slavery's facts and fictions that Daughters engages are slave revolts, African reli- gions, indigo plantations, and de facto black slavery beyond Amer- ica’s southern states. True to her intent to tell a different story of slavery, Daughters represents these slavery atrocities through myth, black oral histories, and symbolic indirection. For example, Dash sym- bolizes the fact of African revolts against slavery by suicidal drown- ings through the image of a carved wooden African statute floating in a river off the inlet Ibo Landing. The myth of the Ibo Landing scene in Daughters is based on historical records from the logs of slave ships (Dash, Interview}. Eula Peazant, a central character and one of the film’s two narrators, recites such instances of slave revolt from black oral history versions popularized by Paule Marshall's book Praise ‘Song for the Widow (1983). As Dash tells it ‘There are two myths and one reality... . Ibo captives, African captives of the Ibo tribe, when they were brought to the New World, they refused to live in slavery. There are accounts of them having walked into the water, and then on top of the water all the way back to Africa, you know, rather than live in slavery in chains. There are also myths of them having flown from the water, flown all the way back to Africa. And then there is the story—the truth or the myth—of them walking into the water and drowning themselves in front of the captors. ("Daughters” 29-30) Dash uncovered research that claimed that sailors and crew members ‘on slave ships haé nervous breakdowns watching “Ibo men, women 862 : Daughters of the Dust and children in shackles, walking into the water and holding them- selves under the water until they in fact drowned” (30). ‘The character of Bilal Muhammed preserves the historical record of African religious traditions that existed alongside Christianity among enslaved African Americans. Dash’s research turned up the fact that a Sudanese man named Bilal Muhammed, a Muslim with five daugh- ters, actually lived during the slavery era. His diaries and papers, on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution, tell of his family’s efforts to practice their “tradition of Is.am” even in captivity (Dash, “Daughters” 36). Dash saw Muhammee’s Islamic tradition as an im- portant narrative counterpoint to Vicla’s uncritical acceptance of Christianity despite its complicity in slevery and other forms of colo- nialist oppression (37). In Daughters, Viola returns from the mainland as a missionary who reflects the Westem view that unfamiliar reli- gions are dealing with the Devil She embodies the view of some black people that anything Western bests anything African and thus will up- lift them. Apparently, as part of an educated and enlightened black elite coming back to Ibo Landing to film the primitives, Viola also rep- resents flawed tendencies in the DuBoisian notion of “the talented tenth,” the idea that the “best” of the black community need to focus on achieving higher education in order to develop a leadership capac- ity (Dash, Interview). Dash addresses traditional history's diminution of black people’s de facto slave status in the North and in other locales through the overdetermined lead character of Yellow Mary. Yellow Mary, a prosti- tute, is not only a narrative counterpoint to Viola's womanly Christian virtue, Dash also positions Yellow Mary as a survivor of the main- land's racist oppression. Whereas Viola brings religion to Ibo Landing, Yellow Mary brings her girlfriend (Dash; Interview). Although Yellow Mary returns as a woman of means, signified by her fancy clothes and expensive trinkets (the memory box, for example), she recounts her painful bondage experiences as a wet nurse for rich women in Cuba. Her plight of providing mother’s milk for suckling white babies from her breast was a common one for slave women. Yellow Maty’s ac- count of refusing this abject slave condition and her ultimate decision to return to Ibo Landing permanently is meant to be a caution for those members of the Peazant family planning their northern migra- tion to the mythological promised land As symbols of the mainland, 863Everett itis ironic that Yellow Mary and Trula run away from the very oppres- sive conditions that the Peazants are running toward (Dash, Inter- view). Yellow Mary understands what the Peazants cannot know, which is the impossibility of sustaining the family’s basic needs in the North in any way commensurate with the natural and free agricul- tural bounty of Ibo Landing. This is one symbolic reference and signif- icance of the Peazant family’s gumbo feast, its allegorical Last Supper. Close Reading What makes Daughters ofthe Dust an important film within the context of womanist diasporic cultural production is its ability to adroitly en- gage issues of postslavery migration, historical memory, feminine identity, and cultural dislocation through character development. Daughters is a formally experimental avant-garde treatise on the psy- chosocial location of African Americans astride two distinct cultures, that of the Ibo of West Nigeria and that of American slavery in Con- federate Georgia, and a treatise that is abundantly rife with narrative conflict and potential. The future, pregnant with possibilities, is ex- pressed metaphorically in the members of the Peazant family who plan to migratenorth from Ibo Landing, Conflict, although situated in not-too-distant past, is represented in such a manner that its rele- vance to contemporary issues is inescapable. Itis the film’s emphasis ‘on conflict, then, that marks its seditious potential. Dash acknowl- ‘edges that she rivileges female characters in her films. Because of the mythic role played by women in traditional African societies, itis not surprising that Dash would imbue her female characters with traits such as strength, wisdom, tenacity, and adaptability, all of which have sustained Africans throughout the diaspora. Lest it be mistakenly thought to contain only mythical characters that are paragons of virtue, Daughters does present complex characters in support of the script’s more realist impulses. Nana, Yellow Mary, and Hagar are the characters, in my view, charged with carrying out the film’s ideologi- cal imperative and who contextualize and historicize the Africanness of African American cultural and traditional practices. In the elderly family matriarch Nana, we are presented with a historical link to the African past of African Americans. To the extent that she fiercely clings to memories of a time “before freedom come,” as well as preserves many of the ancient customs and ways, Nana 864 Daughters of the Dust functions as the repository of a certain history that can serve as sup- port for an uncertain future. Ithas often been stated that history is less concerned with an accurate accounting of past events than itis with providing a framework from which to apprehend the future. It is in “upholding this concept of historical utility that the following exchange between Nana Peazant and her grandson Eli Peazant becomes espe- cially meaningful. Nana insists that Eli keep in touch with the lessons tobe learned through valuing and remembering his African ancestors: {I'm trying to give ya something to take Nort with ya along with all you great, big dreams. Rely upor those old Africans, El, Let them feed your head with wisdom that is from this day in time. ‘Cause when ya leave this island, Eli Peazant, you ain’t going to no land of milk and honey. Eli 'm putting my trust in you to keep the family togedder up Nort. That's the challenge facing all you Negro people what free. Celebrate our ways. Clearly, the historical economy in Nana’s remarks is directed to African American spectators who, for any number of reasons, know too little about their histories prior to the slavery episode. Nana's in- vocation that “it’s up to the living to keep in touch with the dead” is simply an allusion to the responsibility of blacks to educate them- selves about their histories, which are intentionally elided and dis- torted in official Wester interpretations of black history. In reminding Eli that the African ancestors did not “forget everything they once knew,” and that he should “celebrate our way,” Nana's message is clear: African Americans need to recoup and revere their cultural tra- ditions, and to respect the fact that blacks survived slavery, a four- hundred-year holocaust, and have gained some important and useful survival techniques that must be tapped in amassing the courage and strength necessary to face future obstacles. ‘Tosituate the character of Yellow Mary Peazant requires at once the establishment of her centrality in the articulation of a diasporic genre of cinematic expression and the recognition of her interrogative func- tion vis-a-vis the changing status of women throughout the African diaspora—her womanist function. With respect to Yellow Mary as a signifier of principles that typify womanist diasporic cinema, I think a few quotes from the film can prove illustrative. At one point during 865Everett the film’s progression, several adolescent girls voice their curiosity about Yellow Mary, who has just arrived on the island. The dialogue proceeds thus: FIRST GIRL: What kind of ‘oman she is? ‘SECOND GIRL: Yellow Mary ain’tno family ‘oman. THIRD GIRL: She a scary ‘oman. FOURTH GIRI: She a new kind of ‘oman! We have already noted that the language itself is a diasporic marker, a reflection of the Gullah dialects that Dash researched extensively. Here, however, Yellow Mary's dual function is suggested. First of all, as a new womat, Yellow Mary is considered scary because she breaks with established notions of female identity and agency. Second, the al- lusion to family here, as in she “ain’t no family ‘oman,” suggests her rejection of an essentialist notion of what it means to be a woman in a traditional exterded black family as represented by the Peazants of Ito Landing. Yellow Mary has reconciled the binarism of the African American diaspora. She can love her African past, as represented by \Nana, and she can enjoy her present and future, as demonstrated by her delight at being different from the women who have yet to see the mainland. Yellow Mary signifies the integrated African American who is confident in her dual cultural identity and national heritages. Yel- low Mary is comfortable with her Gullah identity, astride her black and white cultures, and does not accord one primacy over the other. Her own comments flag at least one key diasporic iconography: I got ta keep movin, people settin’ still don’t get it with me ya know. . .. Eula, you a real backwater, Geechee girl. Wish could find mea good man, Bula, somebody I could depend on. [Not that I want to depend on him, just to know that I could if | hhad to. You know, I sure hope they fixin’ some gumbo. It's ‘been a long time since I had some good gumbo. [had some in Savannah you know, but they didn’t put everyting in it. I haven't had some good food in along time. Referring to the traditional women who cook, Yellow Mary's desire for gumbo should be recognized instantly for its Creole symbolism. 866 Daughters of the Dust ‘The term “gumbo,” naming a Creole dish, is deployed here deliber- ately to overdetermine both diasporic consciousness and cinema. Kobena Mercer regards the Creolizing tendency as a “dynamic which tically appropriates elements from the master-codes of the domi- nant culture . . . disarticulating giver signs and rearticulating their symbolic meaning otherwise” (57). Yellow Mary yearns for a “good ‘man,” but her insistence on self-reliance signals an important compo- nent of feminine space within the African diaspora. The implications for women filmmakers hold here as well. Yellow Mary's strength and resolve are central to the ideological discourse in Daughters because they suggest black women’s myriad coping mechanisms to confront their triple oppression: sexism, racism, and classism (hooks 14). For Yellow Mary, her identity is firmly rooted in a past that she can touch, Nana Peazant and Ibo Landing, and a future and present that will be determined based on her choice to remain behind or depart with the others. As it gets closer to the time for the family to load up the boat and head for the mainland, Yellow Mary realizes that she may not see Nana again, as Nana is getting on in age. After a hostile ex change with Hagar, a Peazant through marriage, Yellow Mary con- fesses to Nana, “I've been on my own since I was a lil gil... .T know I'm not like the other ‘omen here. But [need to know that I ean come and hold on to what I come from, I need to know that the people who know my name, Yellow Mary Peazant,and know I'ma proud ‘oman. I want for stay with you here.” Where Yellow Mary represents the cbility to fuse her “third world” and “first world” cultural heritages with equanimity, Hagar Peazant seeks to fully embrace one at the expense of the other. Haagar’s char- acter could be said to reflect the total assimilationist impulse exhibited by one faction of the African diaspora. Her myopic assessment that the Gullah traditions of the past and the modem ways of the present are completely incompatible proves to be a painful miscalculation as the story progresses. In voicing her opposition to the rest of the fam- ily’s attempts to convince Nana to migrate north with them, Hagar ‘emphatically lets her feelings be known: “I'm a educated person, and. I'm tired of those old stories, watching her make those root potions. ‘Who do she be talking to, washing up in the river with her clothes on like those saltwater folks used to do? My children ain't going to be like those old Africans, fresh off the boat. My god, I still remember.” Dash 867Everett is perhaps sounding a cautionary note on the dangers of being brain- washed by an educational system that overemphasizes Western his- tory and that deemphasizes the role of Africa and its peoples in world civilization and American history. For Hagar, the past is meant to be forgotten so that she and her children can finally inhabit that dreamed of future in an imagined land of milk and honey. Haagar is not with- ‘out some redeeming qualities, however. That she possesses a dogged determination and force of will speaks to the filmmaker’s grasp of the ambiguities and complexities of effective character development. By fleshing out characters such as Haagar, who hates Yellow Mary, re- sents Nana, and dominates the lives of her daughters, Dash aimost proffers this character to spectators as one who will likely survive the harsh realities of life on the mainland. Consider this statement by Haggar: “I might not've been born into this family, but I'm here now. And I say let Nana Peazant stay behind, that’s what she wants. We're ‘moving into anew day: She's too much a part of the past.” And in re- sponse to possible male resistance to her stance, she replies, “I'm a fully grown ‘oman, and I don’t have to mind what I say. I done born five children into the world, and put two in the ground alongside their daddy. I worked all my life, and ain’t got nothing to show for it, and if can’t say what's on my mind, then damn everybody to hell.” ‘The stark contrast between Nana, who knows nothing of the world ‘outside Ibo Landing and who lives her life at first glance as a fossil of that which she guards so vigilantly, and the rigid and pragmatic Haa- 81, whose forward-looking posture blinds her to the concept of com- Promise, appetrs almost so calculated that one character could be in danger of canceling out the other. But the strong mitigating influences exerted by the other characters act to temper Nana's extreme valoriza- tion of past customs. Likewise, the gentleness of spirit and family loy- alty ascribed to Viola, Eula, Eli, and other characters softens the impact of Haagar’s domineering persona. Dash’s characters are so di= verse that they effectively counter attempts to perpetuate an essential- ist perspective of black cultural, social, political, and sexual identity. Indeed, Daughters celebrates the diversity of “the black experience” with a critical consciousness that interpolates the official histories that are too widely circulated and, at the same time, exposes unofficial his- tories to a wider audience. 868 Daughters of the Dust By deliberately pointing up, in a graphic albeit creative way, the horrors of slavery’s abuses, Daughters counters the popular recollection of slavery as recast and sanitized by such specious representations as Roots, Produced for network television in the 1970s, Roots was at the time the most popular miniseries ir broadcasting history. As the episodes of Rools progressed through he generations, the specifics of African experiences in America were increasingly accommodated to America’s mythology of immigration. Daugitters represents an act of contestation by a black woman filmmaker that is in keeping with the scholarly interventionist mode of postmodern struggle to disrupt the master narrative of postcoloniality anc its xenophobic construction of the African diasporic Other. Metaphorically speaking, then, just as the Peazant family in Daughters of the Dus signifies a moder crossing over to the mainland from the South Carolina Sea Islands, so Dash’s film’s success signifies a significant crossing over to the male-dominated ‘mainstream of theatrical film producticn for black women filmmakers. Conclusion: Finally, there are a few remaining points about Daughters of the Dust that bear mentioning. Several concern further elements of the film’s symbolism. Eula’s pregnancy and her ethereal “unborn child” repre- sents the promise and future of postemancipation African peoples in ‘America despite a horrific engendering or birth under amoral condi- tions. For example, Eula’s rape brings forth a beautiful young daugh- ter, which appears analogous to the rape of Africa's bringing forth the rebirth of Africans as African Americans and their contributions to American culture—in spite of slavery’s degradations. The Native ‘American character Julian Last Child represents Dash’s desire to rewrite the history of the Cherokee nation’s forced relocation from the South and the Sea Islands to Oklahoma. Dash wanted Julian Last Child to represent the idea that at leas: one of the indigenous peoples. remained behind and enjoyed a life of freedom and autonomy. The names of Hagar Peazant’s daughters, Jona and Myown, are signifi cant in their reference to one of slavery’s most abhorrent practices selling black women and their children separately. Through these names, Dash evokes the inhumane practice without stating it, as such. 869Everett The marriage of Julian Last Child and Iona is also meant to illustrate the long history of intermarriage between African Americans and Na- tive Americans, The glass-bottle tree gains its significance when Eli breaks many of the bottles. Eli's breaking of the bottles represents an act of cultural sacrilege, in that itis equivalent to “taking a hatchet to the Bible” (Dash, Interview). When Mr. Snead, the photographer, un- necessarily uses the flash on his camera in the daytime, itis not a sign of his incompetence. Rather, it is meant to provide an insight into his. character. He is a show-off who makes a spectacle of himself because he is full of himself (Dash, Interview). Finally, Daughters took Dash twenty-three days to shoot. When asked in 1995 if she was 100 percent happy with the film, Dash indicated that she was 90 percent happy with it because, as she stated, “itis difficult to realize a film in actuality as faithfully asit appears in your imagination” (Dash, Interview), Credits United States, 1991, American Playhouse, Geechee Girls Director, Producer, and Screenplay: Julie Dash Cinematography: Arthur Jafa Editing: Joseph Burton and Amy Carey Music: John Barnes ‘Art Direction: Michael Kelly Williams ‘Costume Design: Arline Burks CAST: Nana Peazant ‘Cora Lee Day Eula Peazant ‘Alva Rogers Yellow Mary Barbara O. Jones Trula “Tela Hoosier Bilal Muhammed ‘Umar Abdurrahamn li Peazant ‘Adisa Anderson Haagar Peazant Kaycee Moore Jona Peazant Bani Turpin Viola Peazant Cheryl Lynn Bruce Mr. Snead ‘Tommy Redmond Hicks St Julien Lastehild -M, Cochise Anderson ‘Unborn chile KaicLynn Warten 870 Daughters of the Dust Bibliography Bambara, Toni Cade, Preface. Dash, Daughters xiv Bobo, Jacqueline, Black Women as Cultural Readers. New York: Columbia UP, 1995 Brouwer, Joel R. “Repositioning: Center and Margin in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust.” African American Review 29.1 (1995) 5-17. Dash, Julie. "Daughters of the Dust": The Making of an African American Woman's Film. New York: New P, 1992. Interview with faculty and students of University of Colorado, Boulder. ‘Unreleased video, 25-27 Sept 1995. Guerrero, Ed. Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film, Philadephia: ‘Temple UP, 1993. Hall, Stuart. “New Ethnicities." ICA Documorts Ed. Kobena Mercer. London: Inst. Contemporary Arts, 1988, 2-31. ‘hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin 1o Center. Boston: South End, 1984 Lee, Spike, and Lisa Jones, “Do the Right Thing”: A Companion Volume tothe Univer- ‘al Pietures Fl, Newr York: Fireside, 1985, Mercer, Kobena, “Diaspora Culture and the Dialogic Imagination: The Aesthetics ‘of Black Independent Film in Britain.” Elack Frames. Ed. Mbye B. Cham and (Claire Andrade-Watkins. Cambridge, MA: MIT F, 1988. 50-61. Williams, Sherley Anne, “Some Implications of Womanist Theory.” Reading Black, ending Feminist: A Critical Anthology. Fa, Henry Louls Gates, Jr. New York: Meridian, 1990. 68-75. a7