Ashes and Embers

Following on the heels of Bush Mama, Haile Gerima’s third feature Ashes and Embers offers a stirring account of the challenges and upheavals faced by Black veterans of the Vietnam War, represented here in the form of Nay Charles (John Anderson), an African American soldier who, upon returning to his hometown after a stint in Vietnam, struggles with newfound disenchantment and alienation as he attempts to reconnect with the decidedly American way of life he once inhabited. Caught between the competing pressures and contradictions of a Black middle class content to accommodate the brutality of the existing power structure and a heterogeneous coalition of radical activists with the will, if not the resources, to transform a society rooted in racism, Charles decamps for Los Angeles, only to discover the impossibility of escaping the legacies of systematic discrimination and disenfranchisement that continue to resonate in American society.