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Abstract:
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This research provides a historiography of Africanisms and religious expressions explored in Geechee cultural and literary traditions, specifically within African-American women’s fiction. The Sea Islands, off the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, have captured the imagination and interests of black female artists since the 1930’s. Whereas interests in the Sea Islands by scholars never completely dissipated, it waned in the 1950s while the 1960s and 1970s saw a resurgence of African-American literature vis-a-vis the Black Arts Movement. During the 1970s, black women writers also highlighted the importance of oral history and folklore as an important source for recovering what they viewed as not only a maligned history of black Americans but also black women. The coalescence of cultural and academic interests, publication of new research materials, and discovery of historical works such as Drums and Shadows enabled the Sea Islands to emerge in the national black imagination in new ways that visual artists and writers would illuminate. During the late twentieth century, Diasporic female voices such as Maryse Condé responded to the legacy of writing established by our literary foremother, Zora Neale Hurston. Likewise, Toni Morrison, Toni Cade Bambara and Paule Marshall laid the groundwork for other novelists and filmmakers like Julie Dash and Tina McElroy Ansa to signify upon with regards to the Sea Islands and Gullah cultural traditions. |
