ISBN: 9780385493765

Product DescriptIn this beautiful cultural memoir, Sapelo Island native Cornelia Walker Bailey tells the fascinating history of her remarkable and threatened Georgia homeland. Off the coa… More...

Product DescriptIn this beautiful cultural memoir, Sapelo Island native Cornelia Walker Bailey tells the fascinating history of her remarkable and threatened Georgia homeland. Off the coast of Georgia, a small close-knit community of African Americans traces their lineage to enslaved West Africans. Living on a barrier island in almost total isolat, the people of Sapelo have been able to do what most others could not: They have preserved many of the folkways of their forebears in West Africa, believing in signs and spirits and all kinds of magic.Cornelia Walker Bailey, a direct descendant of Bilali, the most famous and powerful enslaved African to inhabit the island, is the keeper of cultural secrets and the sage of Sapelo. In words that are poetic and straight to the point, she tells the story of her Sapelo--including the Geechee belief in the equal power of God, Dr. Buzzard (voodoo), and the Bolito Man (luck).But her tale is not without peril, for the old folkways are quickly slipping away. The elders are dying, the young must leave the island to go to school and to find work, and the communitys ability to live on the land is in jeopardy. The State of Georgia owns nine-tenths of the land and the pressure on the inhabitants is ever-increasing.Cornelia Walker Bailey is determined to save the community, but time will tell whether the people of Sapelo will be able to retain the land, and the treasured culture which their forebears bestowed upon them more than two hundred years ago.Amazon.com ReviewIt has been said that the Africans who were brought to the United States as slaves were completely stripped of their native culture. But peering scholars such as anthropologist Melville Herskovits have disproved this in academia, while the literature of Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison has also debunked this persistent myth. Living proof of that fact is Sapelo Island, a South Sea island off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, where West African tradits persist despite considerable odds. This vivid memoir by Cornelia Walker Bailey, a lecturer and tour guide on Sapelo Island, transports the reader to this enchanted land of miracles and magic. Walker is a self-described Geechee, a descendant of Islamic African slaves taken from modern-day Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Liberia (she traces her family lineage on the island back to 1803). In God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man, the author brings alive a land where black people speak an African-based Creole language, believe in mojo (the American equivalent of Haitian voodoo), and who work to keep their culture alive. You can th of the Africans as being victims, and in a sense they were she writes. But they were also great survivors. If they survived the Middle Passage, and a lot of people didnt, then they survived everything thrown at them. They were determined people. Thanks in large part to Bailey, this determinat lives on. But her book, which recalls life on Sapelo Island from the 1940s and rings with the same ebullient language found in Jean Toomers Cane, also serves as a ning, noting that outside business interests and the disinterest of the youth threaten the very existence of their ancient ways. We need to be proud of our ancestors from slavery days and of our old people who went through modern hardships and to learn from them that if you believe in something, strength comes from that. With this book, she hopes to pass some of that strength on. --Eugene Holley Jr.From Publishers WeeklyIn a delightful, sincere memoir, born storyteller Bailey reveals the shadows of a little-known culture that is increasingly threatened by encroaching developers. Her tiny community of salt water geechees on Sapelo Island, off the Georgia coast, consists of the survivors of slave families who believe in the power of God, the root doctor and the numbers runner, hence the title. Baileys own family is directly descended from the African Muslim, Bi, Gut, Festpreisangebot, [LT: FixedPrice], Bestes Angebot, [LT: BestOffer], Edition Description: 1st, Binding: Hardcover, Publication Date: 01-08-2000, Sprache: English, Country of Origin: USA, United States, Manufacturer/Packer/Importer Details: ERGODE, Net Quantity/Number of Units: 1, Dimensions (LxWxH) - Inches: 1.3X8.7X5.9, ISBN-10: 0385493762, ISBN-13: 9780385493765, SKU: SONG0385493762, Buchtitel: God, Doctor Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talk, Doubleday<