If This Were a Book: Daughters of the Dust

Title: Saltwater Inheritance

Tagline: They carried their legacy in stories, and their future in salt-stained hands.

Excerpt: As a novel, Daughters of the Dust would read like an ancestral hymn—written in lush prose, layered with whispers, rituals, and memory. The pages would be edged in indigo and the dust jacket printed with hand-painted Gullah motifs. This book would feel like a relic passed down—delicate, divine, defiant.

“The land remembered their footsteps. The water, their names.”

I couldn’t help but wonder… if Daughters of the Dust were a book, would we even know how to read it?

Not with our eyes—but with our ancestors. With our palms pressed to the past and our feet still wet from crossing over.

Because some stories aren’t written in chapters. They’re braided—like hair passed through generations. Like prayers whispered through time. Like secrets only the women remember.

If Daughters of the Dust were a book, it wouldn’t begin on page one. It would begin with a sigh. A soft one. The kind you let out when memory is heavy and history is louder than language. It would smell like indigo, taste like okra, and sound like a woman humming to herself while she stirs both a pot and a prophecy.

It wouldn’t be a story. It would be a ceremony.

And the Peazant family—those wild, wise women draped in white and draped in knowing—wouldn’t be characters. They’d be testimony. Living scripture in the dialect of the divine.

The book would move the way tide moves—forward, back, and all around you. And just when you think you understand where the story is going, a little girl appears, floating in from the future, reminding you that time doesn’t always behave. Not when you’re Gullah. Not when you’re stitched from survival.

It wouldn’t be linear. It wouldn’t be logical. It would be lyrical.

It would teach us that migration isn’t just about moving north. It’s about what you choose to carry and what you choose to bury. It’s about whether you take the sweetgrass basket—or the story inside it.

And if Daughters of the Dust were a book, I imagine it would sit untouched on someone’s shelf for years… until a daughter of the future—a filmmaker, maybe, or a writer sipping tea while barefoot—picks it up, dusts it off, and realizes:

This book is me.

This book is all our mothers.

This book is an heirloom.

Because some stories aren’t made for airports or book clubs. Some stories are made for rituals. For rocking chairs. For front porches that know your grandmother’s name. And in a world constantly rushing forward, Daughters of the Dust reminds us to look back—not in regret, but in reverence.

Because sometimes the past isn’t behind you. It’s underneath you. Holding you up like a root.

And maybe, just maybe, the future is listening.