Storytelling: The key to cultural longevity and intergenerational connections

“We would learn about many things during storytelling time around the fireplace or in hearing the older folks talk amongst themselves.”¹

Sallie Ann Robinson

The image above shows the Peazant family, a Gullah family, gathered on the beach listening to stories and folklore in the 1991 film Daughters of the Dust. The film is about a Gullah family spending one last day on their home of St. Simons Island before moving north in 1902. The renowned Julie Dash is the director and Vertamae Smart Grosvenor herself had a supporting role in the film. As film critic Luke Hicks points out, “The image of different Peazants resting, learning, and communing in the sand is one of the more common images of Daughters of the Dust.”² Dash made sure to focus on the importance of storytelling within the Gullah culture, including the story of Ibo Landing, which is told in the next webpage. It is interesting because, while director Julie Dash is depicting the importance of storytelling in Gullah Geechee culture, she is simultaneously being a storyteller herself by creating a movie that tells the story of a Gullah family.

Storytelling is one of the reasons that Gullah Geechee culture and knowledge of the land has been maintained for so long. Their oral history traditions have kept alive memories, wisdom, skills and experiences from generation to generation. This includes keeping alive their foodways and, for many families, a deep and profound knowledge of their land. 

Land, Food and Storytelling

Sallie Ann Robinson’s recipe for “Soothing Sassafras Tea” tells the story of when she, her father, and her siblings would go foraging on Daufuskie Island. “Going into the woods or along the road to dig for sassafras was more fun than you can imagine.”³ Her father knew exactly what kind of sassafras tree to find, how best to extract the roots, and what the best time of year was for extraction; all information he had learned from his elders and passed on to his children. Robinson remembers how much her family and the other inhabitants of her island loved the tea, and her remembrance of the drink blends with the remembrance of storytelling:

“We would listen to stories while we had this evening refreshment [sassafras tea], and this was our relaxing fun time, especially after a hard workday.”⁴

Sallie Ann Robinson

In this simple vignette, there are many layers. To get the tea, Robinson’s father used his knowledge of the land to forage for and correctly harvest wild sassafras roots. This knowledge was the same knowledge his family members had possessed for centuries, passing the knowledge from generation to generation through the same process he shared it with his own children—by going out in the woods to collect it together. Then, like the generations before them, they enjoyed it as a refreshment while sharing stories—stories that were also passed through the same generations that the knowledge of sassafras extraction had passed. The joy of good, simple tea, the communal aspects of sharing drink and stories, is akin to a ritual connecting all the generations of the community and their ancestors before them. 

Matthew Raiford’s family, too, passed on the knowledge of their land, though his grandmother made him earn some of the access to knowledge through effort. Raiford talks about how his first planting season back on the family farm, he planted rows of fruit trees, wanting to bring back the orchards that had once lived in the soil. He explains: “I toured Nana through all of my back-breaking work,” but row after row, every time she asked about what kind of tree each one was, his Nana would just raise an eyebrow. Finally, when they got to a fig tree sapling, she said, “Tell me when that come in.” And Raiford admits: “Every tree, except the fig, died…”⁵

“That’s when Nana handed me the keys to the kingdom, pulling out old letters, dating as far back as the 1940s and stashed away in boxes, that detailed what was planted and when. What worked. What didn’t. The weather. Together, these letters and Nana’s advice are my lodestar.”⁶

Matthew Raiford

Healing from the Land: Home Remedies

“I did not know why we did the things we did; but looking back, I see that we were part of a centuries-old culture of connectedness. We helped each other out with food, with problems, with illness.”⁷

Sallie Ann Robinson

Sallie Ann Robinson’s cookbook doesn’t just include recipes and stories, it also tells about home remedies for many different ailments. Pneumonia, indigestion, asthma, hookworm, ringworm, sore throat, high blood pressure, warts, hiccups, choking on a fish bone, and many more. For ringworm: the milky substance from a fig leaf. For hookworm: sugar and turpentine. For choking on a fish bone: swallow cornbread. 

While it is clear Robinson finds some of the lore odd (she put it succinctly, saying “Native islanders believed some crazy stuff.”⁸), it is equally clear that there were aspects of this lore that were useful, effective, and that she has carried with her. She acknowledges that home remedies were “the only way that we knew how to help our ailing bodies.”⁹

“Island folks have depended on home remedies—the knowledge of nature’s pure and simple ways—for generations as far back as anyone can remember.”¹⁰

Sallie Ann Robinson

Without access to medical care, the Gullah and Geechee communities on isolated Sea Islands kept alive the traditional medicinal knowledge of their land to take care of and heal themselves. Sallie Ann Robinson recalls how her own mother could name the trees, roots, and leaves of Daufuskie Island and knew the medicinal and spiritual properties of every one. Robinson’s mother had learned that from her parents, and they from their parents and so on for generations.¹¹

“Momma was the best doctor, who really knew her stuff well; she often told us how she learned the different ways of the plants and herbs that once grew plentifully on the island. She learned from her parents and from Grandmomma, who had learned from their parents and grandparents. Remedies have been passed down through the generations for as long as my family and others have been on the Sea Islands.”¹²

Sallie Ann Robinson

If you notice in the quote above, Robinson says the “plants and herbs that once grew plentifully on the island.” Once, but no longer. In one of the final sections of this website—Land Loss: Then and Now—we will hear about why those plants and herbs are dying off, and the knowledge of their uses with them.

But for now, it is time to share one of the most sacred stories in the Gullah Geechee culture…

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Footnotes

1. Sallie Ann Robinson, Cooking the Gullah Way: Morning, Noon, & Night (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 125. Available here.
2. Luke Hicks, “A Color Theory Reading of Julie Dash’s ‘Daughters of the Dust’,” Film School Rejects, published July 25, 2020, https://filmschoolrejects.com/daughters-of-the-dust-color-theory/.
3. Robinson, Cooking the Gullah Way, 93.
4. Ibid, 94.
5. Matthew Raiford with Amy Paige Condon, Bress ‘N’ Nyam: Gullah Geechee Recipes from a Sixth-Generation Farmer, (New York: The Countryman Press, 2021), 27. Available here.
6. Raiford, Bress ‘N’ Nyam, 27.
7. Robinson, Cooking the Gullah Way, 21.
8. Ibid, 125.
9. Ibid, 131.
10. Ibid, 131.
11. Ibid, 131.
12. Ibid 132.