Whittle

When African American Chicago wood sculptor William Walker Whittington V—known simply as Whittle—unexpectedly inherits land in rural Louisiana, he believes he is receiving little more than a complicated legal obligation. What he uncovers instead is a buried family history that forces him to confront questions of race, art, ownership, and belonging—and alters the course of his life. The property, Mayhaw Plantation, is bound to a painful legacy: Whittle’s great-grandmother, Mémé, was sold into servitude there as an infant. As Whittle returns to the land, he is drawn into the lives of those who still live and work it—a fiercely creative Creole artist and her chef brother; their extended family of farmers and musicians; and an unlikely young white cousin whose loyalty and vulnerability challenge Whittle’s assumptions about family, inheritance, and race. As tensions erupt—culminating in acts of racial terror and attempted destruction—Whittle turns to what he knows best: carving, shaping, and transforming raw material into meaning. His sculpture becomes a reckoning, and ultimately an act of reclamation. What begins as an inheritance of land becomes an inheritance of belonging.