Fall 2023 Documentary Showcase Bishop

In Search of My Mothers is a short film about how Carrine Harris Bishop, Rhea Williams-Bishop, and Betty Jean Russell Williams power their homes with acts of love, lessons in life, and the language of food. Like so many others, these women have fed and fortified generations with their labor. With this project, I hope to honor and acknowledge the often thankless labor done within their households while also calling into question the labor itself. In addition to that, I hope to explore the notion of cooking as a task associated with the “role of a woman” by creating a space for these women to share their thoughts on “traditional” gender roles and societal standards for black women. Lastly, I hope to highlight the intergenerational connectivity shared between my mothers and me through food-making and use this project to develop a deeper relationship with each of them.

Amirhea Bishop is a student and creative from Madison, MS. Her mission is to highlight, document, and create stories about Southern Black women who have gone unheard and unacknowledged, thus expanding the narrative of the South and black womanhood. She is an alumna of Jackson State University and is a second-year MA student in the Southern Studies program at the University of Mississippi. Amirhea serves as the research assistant to faculty fellow W. Ralph Eubanks for the Black Power at Ole Miss Task Force committee, which documents the stories and preserves the legacy of the Ole Miss 89 through oral histories. She plans to blend different disciplines across multi-media platforms to document and propagate the unabridged stories of the American South that highlight it as a diverse and complex place.