" to the surprise of the spry seafarers/ sassafrass announced/ "i'ma be a cunjah." they laughed credulously/ sayin/ "you awready a geechee / how much more magic you want?"
--Ntozake Shange, "Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo"
Gee·chee(gch)
n. Coastal South Carolina and Georgia
1.
a. The Gullah creole.
b. A speaker of Gullah.
2. Offensive Used as a disparaging term for a person who speaks a nonstandard local dialect, as in Savannah, Georgia, or Charleston, South Carolina.
I don't remember when I exactly came up with "Brooklyn Geechee". I just remember that from reading "Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo" and ultimately "Daughters of the Dust" that I resonated with these woman, called backward, ignorant, heathen and immoral when they were basically trying to honor their ancestors by keeping to the old ways and living the most genuine happy life they could live.
I related to that because walking around Brooklyn, I felt like the onliest little black girl that wasn't into rockin' a name brand, thinking about dating a brother with rims (or even a car for that matter!), and listening to some of the goddess-awful music spewing out of the radio. People would see me with my gig bag on my back and go "You play the guitar?" almost with this shock. So I decided to call myself a Brooklyn Geechee : Ridiculed for being different, weird, heathen and strange.... and loving themselves and their lives regardless!
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