"I arrived late to this book": teaching sociology with Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, the 'novel'

Cultural productions like Julie Dash's trilogy Daughters of the Dust need to play a more central role in the teaching of anti-colonial sociology. Representing the human condition and rethinking the purpose of doing sociological research, these works offer an important corrective to Western social science and historiography. As non-linear Diasporic texts, they require that author and reader alike actively engage in their culture, learn its symbols and participate in the struggle for human freedom. Investigating the linked past, present and future of all Africans, including their persistent resistance and revolt against the more than 500 years of enslavement and colonization, these works represent invaluable tools for social change. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]