Pride Month – Free of Labels
Sara Daise is working toward a world free of labels. A current Ph.D. student and M.A. History & Culture 2019 alumna, she describes herself as a Black, queer, fifth-generation Gullah Geechee woman, Afrofuturist, cultural history interpreter, writer, singer, and healer. Daise believes the key to realizing the future is to unlock the generational trauma experienced by victims of injustice, especially Black women and women of African descent.
She uses Afrofuturism and Sankofa Shadow Work in healing. Afrofuturism has been described as the philosophy of science fiction, and history that traverses across African Diaspora culture with technology. (Source: A review of “Afrofuturism”)
Daise explains, “I see Afrofuturism as a way of exploring and celebrating the existence of Black people through time. It’s about imagining a free, safe, and empowered future. It is the recognition that we are the future that our ancestors dreamed of, and it is our power and responsibility to create the future for our descendants. This interest was driven by my awareness of the harmful beliefs held by many of my contemporaries around areas of race, culture, gender roles, and sexuality. During my research, I came to understand that these beliefs have their genesis in the negative realities faced by Africana women – slavery, patriarchy, toxic masculinity – both without and within the Black community.”
She explains Sankofa Shadow Work as reframing the collective and personal past, remembering, reviewing, refining, and releasing narratives, beliefs, and survival methods that no longer serve us. “It is part transmutation, alchemy, self-reflection, and energetic boundaries. It means grace for my ancestors, my descendants, and grace for me. It means tapping into nature, spirit, seen and unseen resources, my physical body, and beloved community, and creating the society this abundant and generous planet deserves.”
Daise’s faculty adviser, Diane Allerdyce, Ph.D., Chair and Faculty of the Humanities & Culture (HMS) major of the Ph.D. program in Interdisciplinary Studies, recognizes her quest for social justice.
“Sara Daise is a scholar-practitioner-poet who brings a wealth of wisdom and insight to the Ph.D. community. Her sense of connectedness to all living beings and the somatic awareness with which her writing confronts historical and present oppressions are inspiring. We can all benefit from Sara’s example to embrace both presence and resistance, to find strength in lived experiences, and to embody a reimagined paradigm for the world while working tirelessly for racial and gender justice.”
Daise, a fifth-generation Gullah/Geechee, credits her Union experience for expanding her critical thinking skills. She also credits the UI&U expansive online library for her research, especially sources she is exploring about Black feminism. Union’s online library provides more than 125,000 electronic full-text periodicals via more than 150 online licensed research databases; electronic journals; four million e-books and six million doctoral dissertations from colleges and universities worldwide, including over 6,000 dissertations by UI&U students.
She has inherited her creative and storytelling skills from her mother, Union alumna Natalie Daise (2014 Graduate in M.A. Creativity Studies). Natalie is a creative catalyst who empowers others to be more creative – whether in terms of interpreting their own experience, or in using creative tools to brainstorm, solve problems, or improve the quality of their lives through visual or performing arts and workshop presentations. Natalie also passed down her passion for the Gullah Geechee culture. “I’m in love with the creative process and I want others to identify that within themselves. I want people to walk away from anything that I do and be able to recognize their own creativity,” says Natalie.
Recent creative and storytelling work include “Be Here Now: The South is a Portal” featured in Root Work Journal that re-imagines the South Carolina low country as a portal for the fusion of Africana (Gullah Geechee) and indigenous identity, spirituality, resistance, and ways of knowing. Another recent work is “Blessed Are We”, a re-imagining of free folk in Beaufort, South Carolina in 1862 in response to Revelations 1:1-3 published in Spark & Echo. New author Eden Royse asked Daise to contribute to the educator’s guide “Root Magic”. She and her brother are working on a documentary about the younger generation and their perception of Gullah Geechee’s identity, culture, and evolution through music and conversation.
Daise plans to use her Union Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies in creative ways to make a future “in which we are free, fearless, safe and whole – become the reality.”
Learn more about Sara Daise and her multi-faceted work.
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