I have seen Daughters of the Dust numerous times (at least three, but possibly more) over the years, but each time, it is as if it is the first time that I have ever seen it. I saw it in the nineties when I first started taking films seriously, and this film was way too advanced for a neophyte. I’m sure that I saw it again, but while struck by the imagery, still had trouble grasping it. I have changed over time and how I see things. I have had more experience with complex films, foreign films, artsy fartsy films have broadened my mind and expanded my tastes, but I think that I am still just touching the hem of its garment without fully appreciating its deeper significance. For example, when I don’t understand a symbol in Midsommar, while it may not be easy to discover its real world context, it is not as easy to do that with African symbolism. It is astonishing to me the depth of my ignorance, my lack of understanding of what I think that I know, but I don’t, in spite of being considered educated. Also just simply getting older and having more experience living and being exposed to various people’s experiences helps me understand the characters’ stories in a way that a young adult can’t. Also having more technical tools such as subtitles for every word and noise helps clarify what is going on, which was not available during my earlier showings when I just had to rely on my own ears and interpretation, which is my weakest sense. In addition, I have always embraced my blackness, but as my relationship with the Western world has changed, so have the ways that I interpret the significance of the Western world’s incursion on and the black migration from the Gullah island.
Daughters of the Dust is a significant film because it is the first feature film that a black woman, Julie Dash, directed. The narrative structure is challenging because various people share the narration, “the last of the old and first of the new,” the oldest member of the family, Nana, and an unborn member of the family. It takes place on August 18, 1902, the day before many members of the family leave the island and go to the North; however time is porous, and there are many elements of magical realism as can be expected if an unborn child is narrating and making appearances as a young child while in utero. There is a sense that time is thin, and in this place, the past, present and future can meet in a way that it cannot elsewhere. The problem is whether or not the family will survive this transition as it did when their ancestors were kidnapped and brought in chains to this island. “We were the children of those who chose to survive.” I think that an interesting question to ask yourself while watching this film is if you were one of those people, would you choose to survive and how would you keep a connection to the past and the future.
Daughters of the Dust presents several factions: those who embrace the North and its culture and see it as hopeful, those who reject the old ways and hate anything African because those ways did not protect them from present trauma and those who are trying to remember and embrace the old ways to continue to survive. What I love about the film is that even the most hateful woman whom we would not like now is still someone relatable because she finds her source of pride where she can get it and won’t let herself be held down. I really appreciate how the implicit question asked throughout the film is how to define education or what is considered civilized.
In many ways, Daughters of the Dust is the anti-Midsommar. It is an insular community, completely black, in which the horrors lie outside yet many are eager to run to the danger under the misguided belief that life will be easier because they will be able to forget trauma by embracing an outside culture. There is one character who is a living, breathing warning sign that life off of the island is no crystal stair yet instead of seeing her as a cautionary tale, she is blamed for being different and having different experiences. (Side note: I was so dumb. I thought that she was traveling with her daughter because her accent reminded me of a Caribbean woman and as a pair, they looked similar to my mom and I in complexion.) She shares a kinship and has a solidarity with a Gullah woman who is fresh off a recent trauma, the mother of the unborn child, and relays the following in a moving and resonant monologue, “Once I saw a pink satin case for jewelry for rich women in a shop window. And it had a thing on the side, and you turned it, and music came out. I couldn’t afford that case for myself, and I didn’t ask nobody to buy it for me, you know? But in my mind, I put all those bad memories in that case, and I locked them there so that I could take them out and look at them when I feel like, and so I could study them when I want to, and figure it out, you know, but I don’t want them inside of me. I don’t let nothing in that case or nobody outside that case tell me who I am or how I should feel about me.” This speech leads to an admonishment and a form of communion to give the migrating members of the family strength for their journey.
I’m not sure how I feel about the moments of slow or delayed motion. There are long moments of activity with little to no explanation that I have no idea what is transpiring. While I appreciate all the side character stories that are alluded to: the newlywed couple, the budding romance of a Native American man and a Gullah woman, etc., a part of me thinks that the story would be stronger if those moments were cut. I could be absolutely wrong because each time that I have seen this movie, I realize how much I still have to learn and grow. This time, I found myself moved to tears by the end. So if you watch it, and it leaves you cold, I would suggest watching it once every decade.
If you loved Black Panther, Daughters of the Dust feels like the American, magical realism that made it possible. Even though I am of the North, a Christian, etc. and should be rooting for the team hitting on the road, I just kept thinking that they should stay. It may not be paradise or immune from hurt, but it is a crucial link to the past, essential for the soul to survive that just seems harder to sustain though the conditions are less harsh than slavery. The dust of the Gullahs is lush soil in comparison to the concrete of the mainland.