“LaLee’s
Kin: The Legacy of Cotton” is a startling documentary film. I love
‘docs’ and if I could, I would be working on three at a time. The
first time I watched “LaLee’s Kin” I came in about 1/3 of the way through the
film. Naively, I thought the film was a historical piece about Mississippi
sharecropping, circa 1940s. I dropped my cup upon realized this film was about
something going on today (that was in 2002.) LaLee Wallace is a 62-year old
grandmother living in West Tallahatchie County, one the poorest areas in the
U.S.
Mississippi has a dark and desolate past—a placed haunted by the ghosts of senseless murders, lynching and sadness. There are no lynchings and murder in LaLee’s Kin, but there’s a lot of sadness. What happened to LaLee’s ‘American dream?” Where along the way did she end up living a sharecropper’s life in 2002 that was thematically identical to a sharecropper’s life in 1902? LaLee’s Kin – to a U.S. audience—causes people to ask: “Is this really the United States?” Well, it is—for many people. The stardust left by the American dream is sawdust for many who live in poverty.
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