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

Daughters of the Dust and mommy Day Although their plots are divergent, Julie Dashs Daughters of the Dust and Gloria Naylors florists chrysanthemum Day possess strikingly akin(predicate) elements their setting in the islands murder the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, their cantankerous- except-lovable matriarchs who are both traditional 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 dissimilar Dashs film emphasizes the importance of retaining connections to the ancestral past, while Naylors novel focuses much on love, loss, and reconciliation with the past that is part of the present and will stretch out into the future. Were Dashs audience to return to the South Sea islands lxxx years after Daughters of the Dust they might find the Gullah people and their lives similar to those of the Willow Springs of Naylors novel. Although nearly a century spans between them, these dickens people nevertheless share many traits. Many of the residents of Willow Springs help to a nickname given them as a child similarly, genus Viola Peazant reminisces about the nicknames given to children in Ibo landing place. Members of both communities, generations from Africa and steeped in modernity, still bewilder to the traditional herbalist for help in matters of the body and spirit Eula uses Nanas medicine to contact the soul of her deceased mother Bernice and Ambush beat 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 look lived on their respective islands and their strength from their ancestors, whom they visit and tend at the liquidation graveyards. And like Nana Peazant, Mama Day struggles to maintain a tie with her family members who induct left the island and immersed themselves in the mainstream culture. Cocoa, however, is difficult to recon cile with just one fount in Daughters of the Dust. Perhaps she is mostly like Yellow bloody shame, who has left Ibo Landing but returns in the now of the film. It is unclear, though, why Yellow Mary returns irrelevant Cocoa, she is not in the habit of paying visits to her family, and she is hardly welcomed with the same fervor as is Cocoa. Also, it seems that although both Mary and Cocoa share a stringency to their elder female relatives, Cocoa clashes more with Mama Day than Mary does with Nana.