God, Doctor Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island [Hardcover]

Christena Bledsoe (Author), Cornelia Walker Bailey (Author), Christena Bledsoe (Author), Cornelia Walker Bailey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 15, 2000

In 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 isolation, 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 community's 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.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It has been said that the Africans who were brought to the United States as slaves were completely stripped of their native culture. But pioneering 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 traditions 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 think 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 didn't, then they survived everything thrown at them. They were determined people." Thanks in large part to Bailey, this determination lives on. But her book, which recalls life on Sapelo Island from the 1940s and rings with the same ebullient language found in Jean Toomer's Cane, also serves as a warning, 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 Weekly

In 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. Bailey's own family is directly descended from the African Muslim, Bilali (or Bul-Allah), who founded their community. Many of their traditions can be traced to Africa, as Bailey discovered when she traveled there as an adult. Entertaining and mystifying, her reflections on growing up geechee evidence a healthy respect for the supernatural: on Sapelo, the living are seen to coexist with the spirits of the dead; a curse could lead a person to ruin; and every dream is significant. Bailey herself "died" as a child; her coffin was later used to store her mother's linens when she inexplicably recovered. Bailey's most terrifying reflections, however, concentrate upon the days of slavery and the Jim Crow culture that replaced it. In the decades that followed, Bailey's own father was cheated out of the family homestead by a henchman of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds, according to the author. One indelible image is that of her father reknotting his net, as the family sits at the hearth to watch, before he goes night fishing to feed them. In writing that is both unadorned and poetic, Bailey's soft Southern wit shines through, resonating with humor and charm. Readers enthralled by anthropology and African-American life will not want to put this book down. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1st edition (August 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385493762
• ISBN-13: 978-0385493765
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #507,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Spellbinding in more ways than one., August 18, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: God, Doctor Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island (Hardcover)

This book is spellbinding in more ways than one. In this modern era of homogenized mass-market culture, it's refreshing to learn that there are still people in this country who are different and who are rich in ways that have nothing to do with money. It may have taken Cornelia Bailey half her life to discover that she was to be the storyteller of her people, but she's made up for lost time - she seems born to it, as well as being a living encyclopedia of the history and lore of one of the truly unique places and truly distinctive cultures in America. At times her words ring with a cadence and spirituality of a faraway time and setting, but neither are so remote as they first seem. Only All God's Dangers, the National Book Award winning oral history of Alabama sharecropper Nate Shaw, compares in its reduction to writing of the voice of an African-American community and way of life, but the similarity stops there. The map at the front of the book shows her home, Sapelo Island, to be at best only fifteen miles long, but it was (and still is in many respects) a whole universe to its people, and two centuries of isolation led to the development of a culture and language that is more closely tied to Africa than any other in the United States. Through all those years, thanks to their storyteller, we know that the "Saltwater Geechees" made for themselves a fascinating world with one foot on solid ground and the other deep in mysticism. The book is also first-rate social history. The story of Sapelo and its people may be a microcosm of the struggle of African-American people to cope with the ordeal of slavery and the outrages of the Jim Crow era, but it has the added turn of their being subjected to the machinations of Twentieth Century tycoons with dreams of creating feudal baronies on their secluded island. It was a war that has had more than a few casualties, and one that is far from over, with the nabobs being replaced by bureaucrats in khaki shirts and green pants, but you get the feeling that, with people like Cornelia Bailey manning the gates, the Geechees left on Sapelo will see the latest edition of "buckra" off the island like all who came and went before. Along the journey upon which she takes us we discover the beauty, mystery, and tragedy of a place and people that few ever heard of and none will soon forget. But as sobering as much of that trip is, we also get to laugh. A lot. It's clear that Ms. Bailey had a twinkle in her eye and enjoyed relating these tales almost as much as I enjoyed reading them.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A magical book to read and re-read., October 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: God, Doctor Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island (Hardcover)

Part memoir, part cultural history, part plea on behalf of a fragile culture, God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man is as affecting as the best magic realism. You do not simply read it, you savor it and absorb it into your very soul.

In the book, Cornelia Bailey, resident griot of Sapelo Island off the Georgia coast, spins the story of her growing up in that place and in a time when lives were governed equally by religion, magic, and chance. She admits us deep into the culture of her proud people and introduces us to folkways strong enough to have survived the Middle Passage and the centuries since. So it is with infinite sadness we learn that the forces of progress are rendering these same folkways as fragile as a paper-thin fig shell that washes onto the beach.

It goes without saying that God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man will appeal to cultural historians, anthropologists, naturalists, and environmentalists. The book's strongest appeal, however, will be to lovers of lyrical prose -- and to anyone who delights in the sheer magic of the way words fall on the ear and follow one another on a page.

This is a special book, one that should find a home on every reader's short shelf of well-thumbed volumes that are read and referenced time and again.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book that captures your heart., September 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: God, Doctor Buzzard, and the Bolito Man: A Saltwater Geechee Talks about Life on Sapelo Island (Hardcover)

God, Dr. Buzzard, and the Bolito Man transports the reader to the Georgia sea islands. You swear you can smell the marsh, hear the sea birds cry and taste the sweet potatoes. The writing is so pure and the people so true that you come away afraid of Mama Lizzie, furious at Bukra and proud of Grandma when she faces down the deacons. The issues the book tackles are important - ownership of the land, the insidious effects of slavery, the origins of sea island culture in Africa - but it is also a book that captures your heart. A must for anyone who is interested in people. Highly recommended.