Keith Rushing — Descended: Searching for My Gullah-Geechee Roots - with Rion Amilcar Scott

It began with a name. Sancho. Gleaned from the memory of his oldest living relative, that name set author Keith Rushing on a quest to recover his family's story. Rushing came to learn that Sancho was an African name, a common practice among the Gullah-Geechee communities of the South Carolina and Georgia Sea Islands. He found that Sancho had been born into slavery on Hilton Head Island and later fought as a soldier in a war for self-emancipation. Rushing learned that after that war Sancho had become a small landowner. Above all, he discovered that his family's story was richer than he had ever imagined.In Descended, Rushing recounts his own journey of discovery, and in the process unfurls a dramatic story about the transformation of Hilton Head. Descended is a story about family, place, and the desire to understand where we have been and where we are going.PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781643365626?ic_referral=c8HrEJW1Cn9C7fl5hvN4A6bxd9g-OYQJ8WekJAzoT58wMynmJnyNBcN9354VCivXpuj8kKgZSE1TYyZOJOAf2jgBHd2rlikhJ6FX_9IQFdIdhyGmza-geO6Kfj6iNDNcxM5_bgKeith Rushing is a former reporter who worked at newspapers in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California and now works as a communications strategist for an environmental nongovernmental organization.Rushing is in conversation with Rion Amilcar Scott, the author of the story collection, The World Doesn’t Require You, a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. His debut story collection, Insurrections, was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in The New Yorker and a number of literary journals. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Maryland.*recorded 4/30/2025