Thursday, October 13, 8:00 pm–10:00 pm
Promenade B
Chair: Kern Jackson (University of South Alabama)
The residents of Africatown, U.S.A. in Mobile, Alabama, have re-Centered the Periphery of their space and place through shared stories and cultural preservation for generations. Following Zora Neale Hurston's footsteps, the film Descendant (109 minutes) explores the interplay between memory, evidence, and how descendants bend their narrative to demonstrate the complexity of tradition bearing and heritage preservation. Descendant also reveals the enduring power imbalance that persists between the descendants of the family who chartered the last illegal expedition and the descendants of those who were enslaved aboard it. The ongoing process of “resistance, resilience, and survival” continues to be documented by folklorists as those in Africatown extend their legacy “forming and re-forming” their history.