“He was the most financially successful Black visual artist in history and — depending on whether you listened to his admirers or detractors — either a genius, an idiot savant, or an overblown, overpriced fraud.”
“Ostensibly about a Gullah family whose younger generation are making plans to leave their ancestral islands for mainland U.S.A. at the crest of the 20th century, 'Daughters of the Dust' is also an interrogation of Black America's cleft soul, split between the quest for modernity and a hunger for the replenishment of roots.”
“People who don't know any better think Gullah people talk funny. Those in the know realize that Gullah is a bona fide dialect and are confident in the scholarly thesis that 'Gullah' is a contraction of 'Angola.'”
“It’s a make-it-or-break-it period for us. We do the right thing, we’ll be able to pull into the 21st century with some kind of program. We do the wrong thing, the 21st century is going to be gone, there’ll be no coming back”
