From Library Journal
The Gullah-speaking people of the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands have long fascinated scholars and anthropologists because their culture retains a greater African influence than the culture of African Americans generally. Their creolized language, naming practices, handicrafts, musical styles, folktales, and folk beliefs all give strong evidence of the sea islanders' African roots. Pollitzer, an anthropologist and native of the South Carolina Low Country, presents a thoughtful and thorough examination of the language, culture, history, and population genetics of the Gullah-speaking people. His research into the customs and languages of modern African groups, along with a detailed history of the slave trade, provides tantalizing clues to the regional African origins of some aspects of Gullah culture. Pollitzer's work is scholarly but wide-ranging and engagingly written. Recommended for academic collections in anthropology and African American studies.
-Elizabeth Anne Salt, Otterbein Coll. Lib., Westerville, OH Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A landmark study . . . There is much in this book to be admired. . . . This interesting work draws together a large and varied literature into an easily accessible whole. Representing a lifetime of interest, Pollitzer offers us not only his expertise, but his admiration for the Gullah."--Journal of Southern History
"An excellent book . . . An outstanding summary of our understanding of the Gullah and an important original addition to the literature of the Sea Islands."--South Carolina Historical Magazine
"A near encyclopedia on Sea Island life and culture, ranging more widely over the subject than any previously published account. The Gullah People and Their African Heritage makes a significant and original contribution to the field. . . . A book like this one has been needed for decades."--Michael Montgomery, editor of Crucible of Carolina: Essays on the Development of Gullah Language and Culture
"This is an exceptional and, in my opinion, wonderful book. . . . Pollitzer seems to have exhaustively consulted the anthropological and historical literature pertinent to the Gullah people and to the African cultures from which their enslaved ancestors were taken, as well as to the literature of the slave trade itself. . . . I think that it probably should be in every university and public library."--Curtis W. Wienker, American Journal of Human Biology
"A thoughtful and thorough examination of the language, culture, history, and population genetics of the Gullah-speaking people . . . Wide-ranging and engagingly written."--Library Journal
"A valuable work . . . Pollitzer's main accomplishments here are providing syntheses of current thinking about the 'Africanness' of the Gullah and presenting solid data on source populations, relative percentages of these populations among the Gullah, and showing influences of the different groups on Gullah life and culture."--Choice
"A sweeping social, biological, and cultural portrait of a people who, under the horrific circumstances of American slavery, melded into a distinctive creole population that survives to this day."--Georgia Historical Quarterly
[A] remarkable new sourcebook . . . Includes all the information one could hope to know about a people who have contributed so much to their adopted land."--Hilton Head Island Packet
