Daughters of the Dust and Mama Day :: Julie Dash Gloria Naylor Literature Essays

Daughters of the splash and ma Day Although their plots atomic number 18 divergent, Julie Dashs Daughters of the Dust and Gloria Naylors Mama Day possess strikingly similar elements their saddle horse in the islands off the coast of southwesterly Carolina and Georgia, their cantankerous-but-lovable matriarchs who are both handed-down healers, and stories of migration, whether it be to the mainland or back home again. The themes of the film and the book are different but at the same time not conglomerate Dashs film emphasizes the importance of retaining connections to the ancestral past, while Naylors novel focuses more on love, loss, and reconciliation with the past that is part of the pass and will continue into the future. Were Dashs audience to return to the South Sea islands eighty years after Daughters of the Dust they might detect the Gullah people and their lives similar to those of the Willow Springs of Naylors novel. Although nearly a speed of light spans betwee n them, these two people nevertheless part many traits. umpteen of the residents of Willow Springs answer to a nickname given them as a child similarly, Viola Peazant reminisces about the nicknames given to children in Ibo Landing. Members of both communities, generations from Africa and steeped in modernity, still come to the traditional herbalist for swear out in matters of the physical structure and spirit Eula uses Nanas medicine to contact the soul of her deceased engender Bernice and Ambush come to Mama Day to heal Bernice when she becomes ill, and later for help in conceiving a child. Both Nana Peazant and Mama Day draw their knowledge from a life lived on their respective islands and their strength from their ancestors, whom they visit and persist at the village graveyards. And like Nana Peazant, Mama Day struggles to maintain a tie with her family members who have left the island and immersed themselves in the mainstream culture. Cocoa, however, is difficult to r econcile with except one character in Daughters of the Dust. Perhaps she is mostly like lily-livered Mary, who has left Ibo Landing but returns in the now of the film. It is unclear, though, why yellow(a) Mary returns unlike Cocoa, she is not in the habit of paying visits to her family, and she is barely welcomed with the same enthusiasm as is Cocoa. Also, it seems that although both Mary and Cocoa share a closeness to their elder female relatives, Cocoa clashes more with Mama Day than Mary does with Nana.