According to the UCLA Film & TV Archive, Julie Dash will direct a film based on the life of writer, poet, actress, culinary anthropologist Vertamae Grosvenor, a frequent contributor to NPR (producing award-winning documentaries like 1983’s “Slave Voices: Things Past Telling,” and “Daufuskie: Never Enough Too Soon”), who went on to host NPR’s award-winning documentary series “Horizons” from 1988 until 1995, when it was discontinued.
To be titled “The Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl,” the project received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, via the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture at the College of Charleston.
Grosvenor, who appeared in Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust,” was born in Fairfax, South Carolina, and grew up in a Gullah family (Dash’s “Daughters” tells the story of 3 generations of Gullah women, as you should know). She traveled all over the world as editor for Elan magazine, hosted shows on NPR (including the aforementioned “Horizons”), and has made appearances on several television programs including “The Today Show” and “Nightline.”
She has written several magazine columns for Ebony, Jet, Essence, Publishers Weekly and Redbook to name a few. She also has served on the Literary Task Force for the South Carolina Arts Commission.
She is author of “Vibration Cooking or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl,” an autobiographical cookbook; and of “Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap.”
And to acknowledge African influences on the world, Grosvenor has written a food folk opera called “Nyam,” a Gullah word meaning “to eat.”
No further information on the Dash’s film chronicling Grosvenor’s life is currently available. I do believe it will be a documentary.
But when I know more, so will you.
