Gullah Branches, West African Roots

Gullah Branches, West African Roots is a memoir of a Gullah man discovering personal and cultural connections with West Africa through sojourns to Ghana and Sierra Leone. Ronald Daise, a Gullah native of St. Helena Island, SC, visited Ghana in 2004 as a Fulbright-Hays, US Department of Education fellowship recipient, and to Sierra Leone in 2005 as a participant in Priscilla s Homecoming. The Gullah homecoming to Sierra Leona connected the family of Thomalind Martin Polite of Charleston, South Carolina, with the country of its matriarch, Priscilla, who had been enslaved in 1756, at the age of ten. In 2006, Daise learned that his visits to Ghana and Sierra Leone had been more of a personal family reunion than he realized. He shares maternal genetic ancestry with the Temne people living in Sierra Leone. And he shares paternal genetic ancestry with the Ewe and Akan peoples in Ghana. Daise utilizes poetry, prose, creative non-fiction, songs, photographs, and his own unique voice to involve readers in a vibrant journey to cultural and historical roots.

Ronald Daise  was born on St. Helena Island, a coastal community in South Carolina that still exhibits Gullah culture. A 1978 graduate of Hampton University, Daise has documented Gullah culture and history with books, recordings, and performances since the 1986 publication of Reminiscences of Sea Island Heritage (Sandlapper Publishing, Inc.) He and his wife Natalie starred in Nick Jr. TV s award-winning children s series, Gullah Gullah Island, along with their children, Sara and Simeon.