New Knowledge and Discussion of Sankofa and Diasporic Legends

Week of 3/20

Photo of Gloria Rolando, courtesy of AfroAtenAs.com

This week in class we spoke briefly about our thoughts on some of the movies that we were tasked with reviewing for our midterm. In my previous blog post, I reviewed Sankofa, a gut-wrenching film about the importance of understanding your past to move toward a progressive Black future. It was interesting to hear my classmates' interpretations of some of the symbolism and themes in the movie, and I truly appreciated their perspectives. I missed the class while we were on spring break, as this is by far my favorite class that I'm taking this semester, and one of my favorite classes that I've taken while at Morgan.

We were also given a group assignment to complete that allows us to research the background of a prominent figure in the African Diaspora (my group was assigned Gloria Rolando). I very badly wanted to be assigned to research Assata Shakur, as she has always been a huge inspiration to me since learning of her hand in the Black Panther Party, so initially I was disappointed to be researching this woman I had never heard of before. But, upon reading more about her contributions, I was so excited to learn of her work as an Afro-Cuban filmmaker.

Overall this week was very informative.