I’ll Fly Away: Baadasssss Mamas and Third Cinema in Sankofa

Abstract

In “Passing Strange: Voodoo Queens and Hollywood Fantasy in Eve’s Bayou”, the discussion continues with questions of the ‘tragic mulatto’ constructed as a symbol of cultural identity, at times fuelling the imagination of a white southern elite eager for signifiers of cultural demarcations between themselves and their northern neighbours in the United States. African American folklore and culture, as embodied in the Voodoo lady figure, provides this desired distinction by adding visibility to the otherwise invisibility of ‘whiteness’.