Reviews
"Jones-Jackson's sketches of her Wadmalaw Island friends and informants are uniformly rewarding. In a series of gilt-edged portraits, she introduces us to Gullah-speaking men and women whom the twentieth century is crowding out. . . . At the end of this short book, the reader wishes there were more. More tales from the lips of Ted Williams; more sermons from the allusive genius of the Reverend Renty Pickney, who has memorized the Bible; more interviews with fishermen like Daniel Dent, who can call porpoises for miles around."
—Natural History
Description
When Roots Die celebrates and preserves the venerable Gullah culture of the sea islands of the South Carolina and Georgia coast. Entering into communities long isolated from the world by a blazing sun and salt marshes, Patricia Jones-Jackson captures the cadence of the storyteller lost in the adventures of “Brer Rabbit,” records voices lifted in song or prayer, and describes folkways and beliefs that have endured, through ocean voyage and human bondage, for more than two hundred years.
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Paper List price: $22.95 978-0-8203-2393-0 1989 |
