Daughters of the Dust: A Novel - Softcover

Dash, Julie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0452276071 ISBN 13: 9780452276079

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 1999

Synopsis

Set in the 1920s in the Sea Islands off the Carolina coast where the Gullah people have preserved much of their African heritage and language, this highly praised novel chronicles the lives of the Peazants, a large, proud family who trace their origins to the Ibo, who were enslaved and bought to the islands over one hundred years before. Julie Dash's breadth of vision, insight, and ability to capture and personify the African-American experience is remarkable.' - Terry McMillan'

About this title

About the Author

Thirty years ago, filmmaker Julie Dash became the first African American woman to have a wide theatrical release of a feature film with her Sundance award-winning Daughters of the Dust. The world of the film was the basis for Dash’s eponymous debut novel. Her extensive résumé as a film/TV writer and director includes the award-winning drama series Queen Sugar (season 2), created and produced by Ava DuVernay and Oprah Winfrey for OWN Television, and the NAACP Image Award–winning The Rosa Parks Story, which was also nominated for Emmy and DGA awards. Today she has several documentary projects in the works and is a Distinguished Professor of Art and Visual Culture at Spelman College.

From the Back Cover

In the winter of 1992, nearly one hundred years after motion pictures were invented, the first nationally distributed feature by an African American woman was released in the United States. Daughters of the Dust, written and directed by Julie Dash, was not only praised by critics but became a word-of-mouth sensation, selling out shows week after week. The New York Times called it a "film of spell-binding visual beauty", and said that Dash "emerges as a strikingly original film maker", and the Village Voice noted that viewers "came in massive groups. They came multiple times". The film tells the story of an African American sea-island, or Gullah, family preparing to come to the mainland at the turn of the century. In her richly textured, highly visual and lyrical portrayal of the day of their departure, Dash evokes the details of a persisting African culture and the tensions between tradition and assimilation. Daughters of the Dust: The Making of an African American Woman's Film, which includes Dash's complete screenplay, describes the story of her extraordinary sixteen-year struggle to complete the project. More than simply a tale of a rising artist, it is the record of an African American woman's determination to tell a story that is both historical and emotionally charged. With an introduction by Toni Cade Bambara, an extended interview with Dash by feminist critic bell hooks, an essay by Greg Tate, Dash's story in her own words, and sixteen pages of brilliant full-color images from the film by cinematographer Arthur Jafa, this is an important book for every admirer of the film and every student of cinema.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0452276071
• ISBN 13: 9780452276079
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320