Beauty as Power: In/visible Woman and Womanist Film in Daughters of the Dust

Abstract

One of the most celebrated African American films Daughters of the Dust marks the first feature film directed by an African American woman, Julie Dash, to receive major theatrical release. Set in 1903 at the dawn of the twentieth century, this story chronicles the experiences of the Peazants, three generations of Gullah women and their family’s migration from the remote southern Sea Islands to the urban, industrial north of the United States. Framed amid the seemingly majestic seacoast of the islands, Daughters of the Dust takes on a magical other-worldliness as it explores the hardship of black southern life just a few generations out of slavery. The film focuses particularly on black women and their subjugation by the ‘invisible’ hands of white male patriarchy.