Daughters of the Dust

This story plays out on an island off the South Carolina coast among descendants of the Gullah tribe, who have gathered for a long awaited family reunion. The plot turns on the history of a family brought to America by one of the last slave ships. Left upon an isolated island, the family created an original culture. The narrator of Daughters of the Dust is an unborn daughter, the result of a rape on one of the island's inhabitants. This recalls the attempt, initiated in women's literature, to sew together a story from fragments, scraps of forgotten voices and shreds of history. The director constructs a historical narrative steeped in tradition but also asks the question about black modernity, about the way this is processed in the Afro-American community and its unintended consequences. Dash's film was the first by an African-American female director to receive limited theater distribution in America. According to MOMA, it is now considered a landmark of independent American cinema and is part of that museum's permanent collection.