MEET THE FAMILY,
ALIVE & DEAD
Roseline’s arc from anguish to agency:
THE ANCESTORS DREAM
ROSELINE, 27
An eldest daughter. A third parent. Somewhere in between a Black American and an immigrant. Jaded and disillusioned, Roseline has given up on trying to change the world. Once younger and bright-eyed like her sister Gabrielle, she believed that the world could, and would choose peace through its conflicts. She’s an academic in training to be a professor of religious studies at a highly esteemed university in New York, and is smart enough to know that there’s so much that she could never possibly know. Although she does know more than the white anthropology students whom she tutors.
Now living back in her hometown, she is forcefully reminded of the contradictions of her own identity as she grapples with familial responsibilities. Gabrielle’s disappearance and the heightened crackdown on immigration in the country have left Roseline in a sunken place within herself. Passively, she becomes consumed by nostalgia and escapism. In between depressive naps, Roseline finds it difficult to live in the present moment of life and would rather let it wash over her. Often in her own world, she is either reading about other worlds or dreaming of anywhere else but where she is, a longing for her seemingly impossible opus.
When Roseline realizes that the police have effectively given up on finding her sister, she goes into flight mode, trying to escape her own thoughts. Being unable to run away from them, however, she is forced to listen. As whispers of familiar voices and clues of items that used to belong to Gabrielle start to appear, she has no choice but to accept the responsibility and faith in finding her sister. By the end of the season, Roseline finds herself fully present and ready to face anything that comes her way, either with her words or a machete.