Gullah Girl: A Prism of Being, Showing, and Telling

How Studying Black Narrative Reveals the Self, Honors History, and Guides the Future

Photo by Andrew Shelley on Unsplash

I am compelled by my own family history to crystalize the connections and the rich differences of our narratives and distinct experiences as Black people, with our histories in the world.

I am many things—both to myself and to others. I am a wife, a mother, a stepmother, step-grandmother, daughter, granddaughter, big sister, yerna, tia, sister-friend, soror, attorney, writer, and fledgling illustrator. I struggle with creating and sharing important work in a distracted world, and building a legacy that matters, while carving out security for my family. I am a great-great-granddaughter of Willis and Susie, the first free generation in my family; Susie passed away the year before I was born, in 1982, three weeks before her 100th birthday, before I could receive her blessing. 

I am Gullah/Geechee, born in Charleston, and raised in the rural South Carolina Lowcountry, in Alvin and St. Stephen, SC, near where the indigenous assassin Francis Marion is buried on Belle Isle Plantation in Pineville. I am a binyah, not a come yah.¹

I am connected to my family history in a way that has inspired the “why” of my pursuits. I want to to be a standard-bearer for my progeny in the same way that Willis and Susie (Papa and Mama) have been for me. Curating and cultivating important work then, so that others might benefit from, pursue, and create more important work, is of paramount importance to me.

I aim to engage in deep pursuits that provide value in and connectedness to the Black diaspora. I intend to engage in this pursuit in a manner that pairs intellectual rigor and creative energy. Such study enables an assiduous assessment of the people of the Black diaspora and their world contributions, both as heuristic and corollary to human history.

I hope to continue to reveal the many parts of me, to myself through this writing.  

As an analyst, particularly I want to frame the import of studying and curating various Black histories and narratives.  I will examine them in history, literature, poetry, and life. Study makes impact by exposing these stories to more people.  They can craft these stories into art, lessons, medicine, and whatever else may serve them.  

As an attorney and historian, I have studied these varying Black histories in context.  I am overwhelmingly aware of the acute racial biases we encounter in our varied systems, how they intersect, and how that is reflected in our personal narratives. I aim to continue my work through the concrete pursuit of collecting stories told, and in the process negating those prejudices. 

As a mother and stepmother, 38-year old step-grandmother, madrina y yerna, I want the children in my “village” to have every opportunity to safely live their best lives, and engage in their most challenging pursuits. 

As a person in the African diaspora, I am in awe of our history, resilience, determination, and pursuit of ourselves. I want to share the reflection of these in our experiences and stories, especially amongst ourselves, and as a byproduct, with the world.

I am the great-great-granddaughter of Willis and Susie—Papa and Mama as they are called in my family.

Papa who traveled hundreds of miles to labor on the railroads of Dunn and Wilson, North Carolina, in order to create a better life for his family.

Papa, who plowed and planted with his hands, who purchased 100 acres of land in northern Berkeley County, South Carolina at the turn of the 20th century, only to re-purchase 18 of those original acres due to a legal system that swindled him and his family, and benefited white business and property owners. Today, that stretch of land defined by its crossroads, the intersection of Susie and Greentown roads, is called Greentown. Their struggle wasn’t in vain.

I am the fourth iteration of Susie.  Mama, who gathered hay as a girl, as high as an adult, and received two cents per pile for her stacks, labored to contribute to the Kinloch household. Ma Tina² raised all of the Kinloch/Kinlaw children to be diligent, but Susie, her second oldest, was always keen to help push the family forward.

Mama, who bore 14 children, and buried seven of them—seven of her babies who did not live past infancy and toddlerhood. Mama, who supported her family while her husband was away; this industrious woman, who worked the land with her hands, and plowed, planted, and tended fields to help support her family’s existence.

I look at Willis and Susie and their contributions, and have a desire to build on them through my own pursuits. I want my family to remember me as someone who sought not only their betterment, but their flourishing. I hope that my deeds will tell them that I was someone who didn’t buy the paradigm of lawyering as gatekeeping, and didn’t believe in the mental calisthenics necessary to justify the many, many acts of violence, challenges, and injustices that people in the Black diaspora confront today. I want them to know that I sought to share the beauty and richness and deepness of our stories as Black people, while cultivating the deep work of exploring the intricacies of relationships within these narratives, particularly in an age where shallow pursuits are the hallmark of our epoch.

I have clerked at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, and worked for Black farmers and rural landowners. I have used my language skills to perform internal anti-money laundering and foreign corrupt practices investigations, I have nursed my children, built with my husband, laughed and loved with my friends and family, and in the process, remembered and received the gift of who I am, by recognizing the gift of who my ancestors were. I aim to build on that legacy through my pursuit of writing, drawing, and curating Black narratives.  As much as we are a people of the past, we are a people of the future.  I aim to show and tell it.

1. Binyah and Comeyah are used to describe folks who were born and raised Gullah-Geechee (binyah) and those who come to the South Carolina or Georgia Lowcountry, respectively–and oftentimes, patrotnizingly study us, sometimes teach about us and our culture (at times taking away opportunities from us to do this), and then tell us what we should be doing about our culture, land, and lives.  Sometimes it’s not that deep–oftentimes it is.

2. Ma Tina (pronounced Maa Teena) was my great-great-great grandmother, Susie Kinloch’s mother.  Susie (Mama) married Willis Green (Papa).  There are different spellings of the last names because folks, including siblings spelled them differently especially when they moved North during the Great Migration.