Summary
Nana sews a leather pouch, as Viola urges her to give up her old Gullah beliefs and become a Christian. Nana then shows the group a piece of her mother's hair that her mother gave her when she was young, which she puts in the pouch with a piece of her own hair. She tells the group, "There has to be a connection between those who go North and those who remain, between us who are here and those who are across the sea, a connection!" Nana grows emotional talking about the history of slavery, and the fact that they are all "from the sea" and they "must survive."
Snead speaks to Bilal Muhammad, telling him that he came to America from the French West Indies as a child. Snead is interviewing him, and asks him to recount all that he remembers. Speaking in English, Bilal tells him he came over on The Wanderer, and that many Ibo slaves drowned, that the myth about them walking on water is false.
The women try to comfort Nana as she cries, and Viola begins to cry as well. Bilal tells Snead that his father advised him to cherish women, "the sweetness of life." Nana cries at the thought of losing her progeny in the migration, before abruptly rising and running to Yellow Mary. The islanders watch as she breaks down. Mary and Eula hold her and Mary confesses that she's not like the other women, "but I need to know that I can come here and hold onto what I come from."
All of a sudden, Mary says that she wants to stay on the island with Nana. Nana scolds the children for wanting to leave, calling them "the fruit of an ancient tree." All of a sudden, Eula has an outburst, reminding the group that Mary sent money the previous year to get cousin Jake out of jail. With Eli's encouragement, Eula confronts the community about how they ostracized Mary for getting ruined, and tells them that she too is ruined. She scolds her peers, saying, "Deep inside we believe that even God can't heal the wounds of our past or protect us from the world that put shackles on our feet."
Tenderly, Eula says, "If you love yourselves, then love Yellow Mary, because she's a part of you, just like we're a part of our mothers." She tells her fellow islanders to stop being afraid, that they all deserve good lives because they're all "good women," before advising them to move on and stop living "in the fold of old wounds."
Nana cries in Mary and Eula's arms, when suddenly she sees herself as a young woman running on the island and asking a man how to plant in the dust of the island.
Nana gives a speech to the islanders about how the end of her life is coming, and that she will not see what will happen to the free Gullah people. When a boy asks if she's going to heaven, she tells him that she will still be working in the soil, and ties a talisman to a Bible, saying, "We've given old Gods new names." She invites the islanders to kneel at her feet as she leads them in a ritual to give them strength. They each hold Nana's hand and kiss the Bible one by one. In the middle of the proceedings, Trula runs away into a field.
In the middle of the ritual, Viola becomes upset, yelling that old people are supposed to die and go to Heaven. "It ain't right!" she says, crying, and Haagar screams that Nana's ritual is a "Hoodoo mess." Snead kisses Viola, and Nana calls to Haagar, "I love you 'cause you're mine!" but Haagar walks away from the ritual site. Viola kisses the Bible and holds Nana's hands.
Bilal reads from the Quran in the early morning. The islanders prepare to leave the island, and Iona paces along the shore, when suddenly St. Julian comes riding a horse through a nearby field. Nana cries as she watches her progeny get in the boat and we hear her narrate, "They would carry my spirit. I would remain here with the old souls."
St. Julian rides up just as the boat is leaving and Iona gets off the boat to run to him. When Haagar runs after her, a man grabs her and pulls her back as Iona jumps on the back of St. Julian's horse and they ride off together. The boat leaves, and we see Mary crying on the shore, staying behind.
The Unborn Child narrates that the boat left on August 19, 1902 for the North, "perhaps never to see us again." Eli and Eula stay behind with Mary and Nana, and the Unborn Child is born. We see her on the beach, as she narrates that Eli got involved with the anti-lynching law. We see Nana, Mary, and Eula walking on the shore in the sunlight, as the Unborn Child narrates, "We remained behind, growing older, wiser, stronger."
Analysis
The connection between past and present, here and there, that is so widely referenced in the film, can be summed up by Nana's assessment that "We are as two people in one body, the last of the old, and the first of the new." Nana draws an explicit connection between herself and Eula's unborn child, suggesting that there is a very real continuity between age and birth, that each person is simply a part of a larger cosmic "body." This metaphor serves as an organizing principle for Nana, and she grows emotional as she spreads this wisdom among her progeny.
After spending so much time in the midst of the matriarchal structures of the island, we are introduced to Bilal Muhammad, a practicing Muslim and important elder, who came over to America on the last slave ship. His perspective contrasts with the other members of the community, in that he has chosen the Muslim religion over both the traditional Gullah belief system and Christianity, and he has a very specific access to historical memory.
In eschewing the mythical thinking of the other islanders, Bilal takes a realistic if disturbing perspective on history. After Eula has just described the arrival of the Ibo people on the island as a magical affair, in which they all miraculously walked on water, Bilal intervenes, saying that he was there and remembers it differently. In his memory, the Ibo people drowned, shackled together. Puncturing the bubble of magical thinking and spiritual escape, Bilal suggests that no one can actually walk on water, and we see a look of disappointment and disturbance pass across Snead and Eli's faces.
While they have all been so strong for so much of the film, Nana, Eula, and Yellow Mary all experience emotional breakdowns when they confront the fact that the islanders are leaving the place where they put down roots. Nana cries as Viola and Haagar urge her to come with them into the modern age, and Eula and Yellow Mary run to comfort her, when suddenly Mary has her own kind of breakdown about wanting to be able to connect to her past. When the other islanders belittle Yellow Mary, Eula breaks down about her own "ruin" and her unborn child, and the internalized shame of women in her community. The scene is a cathartic moment in a film that has featured characters with such emotional strength, and serves to show that in spite of progress and healing, there are still great wounds left by subjugation and slavery, wounds that have had lasting effects on the whole community.
As painful as this moment is for the three women, Eula ends up delivering a speech that offers healing to the community, and Nana, Mary, and Eula all stay behind to carry on the legacy of the island. Mary, the consummate wanderer, ends up back in the home that she feels rejected her, and Eula makes peace with the conception of her child, and has it on the island. While the narrative of the film has followed the Peazants' decision to leave the island, the viewer ends up staying with those who remain on the island, and these are the ones who seem to be the most open-minded and open to evolution, passing their lessons on and growing wiser and stronger with the next generation, the Unborn Child.
