Volume II Special Issue VI June 2022

Name of Author : Ms. M Bhuvaneshwari

Title of the paper : Indigenous Culture and Food Recipes of Geechee People in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress &Indigo

Abstract: Most of the Afro American writers had produced their literary texts to explore the hardships and struggles faced by black and the threats posed over them by the dominants. Some of their texts explored the hidden sides of the black people who had been struggling for their fundamental needs to survive. Ntozake Shange is also one among them who completely focused her content on how suppressed people are muddling to get their own identity along with their indigenous culture. Though Sassafrass, Cypress Indigo is the first novel of Ntozake Shange, she mended her characters deeply with the Gullah Culture. Shange had employed various narrative techniques to substantiate the ethnicity and innateness of Gullah culture. Shange attempted to project the importance of one’s origin and culture to be successful in attaining one’s identity in the dominant society. Shange also had thrown light over the dominance and enforcement of racial discrimination of white people over coloured people. She chiseled the story with the perfect measures of traditional rituals, food recipes, magical spells and spirituality of Geechee people. She narrated the novel with her unique style of choreo poems which is interconnected with the continuation of African culture on the Gullah Islands.

Keywords : Gullah Culture, Choreo Poems, Geechee People, Food Recipes, Ethnicity

DOI :

Page Number : 59-61