For this post I wanted to read about Paulette L. Williams before “Ntozake Shange.” Much of the work I’ve been doing has been analyzing the effects, consequences, and partnerships that have come with Shange’s art, so I thought it well to go back to lost in language and sound to remember her thought processes before she came into her artistry.
“INITIALLY, I WAS DEMONICALLY TICKED AT THE NOTION that I, Ntozake Shange, a.k.a. Paulette Linda Williams, whose American birth certificate from an alleged Union state, New Jersey, read “colored” in 1948, was asked to write a piece about justice. This was truly laughable, since it is quite clear to me that “justice” as a fact, fantasy, or concept is so removed an actuality in my life, intellectually as well as visceral…
This idea is false. The general ideas roaming American minds — black, white, Asian, Chicano, Texan, urban, empty of truth whichever they are about who and what I come from is “just” for us — are scary as the bullet holes of Huey Long’s assassinations in Baton Rouge and as sad as the Trail of Tears, and I haven’t gotten to “the Negro” yet.(124)”
For this assignment I found a website sponsored by the New York Times to be quite fascinating: Snow Fall The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek by John Branch.
When you first hit enter on the web link you are taken to a landing page that shows the title of the work over-layed on a looping video of snow. The effect is immediate and brings excitement for what’s to come next.
I’ve been getting very caught up in so much academic jargon, so for my archive task I wanted to go back to the original roots of my interest — Shange herself.
I had seen this journal entry earlier last fall, but at that point I quickly moved on because I was searching for a piece of Shange within the archive that resonated with my project. Stumbling upon this journal entry again reminds me that within all our projects and all our research the chief task we carry is to fulfill the occupation of storyteller. We must weave together distant echoes, pure evidence, slang from generations back, and art from magazines present to create a narrative we can visually depict. Read More
Dear 2018 Zakettes, Madiha & Sylvia mentioned Lynda.com as a digital resource. As it turns out, a previous Shange student had discovered Lynda and posted this as one of her digital tips–KFH
Despite how tough it seems, there is so much privilege, and sometimes beauty, that comes with being a student. A few weeks ago I discovered LYNDA a self-training, online resource that has thousands of video courses that teach software skills, design skills, and even business skills.
To complete this task I used the Barnard Archives. I didn’t walk in knowing exactly what item I needed or what letter, unfinished play, or poster would solidify my understanding of Zake: I walked in a little restless and slightly resentful of the fact that there were so many possibilities.
… I realized later that the beauty of the archive is that the possibilities are evidence that there is so much to the making of a life.
At first I considered looking through the journals (Series 3),so I did. Then, I thought I should see the artwork collected by Shange (Series 8.2), so I did. And finally, I said to myself, “look at the photographs! You’re a person stimulated by visuals and perceptive to detail, so find something that catches your eye” — series 7. I rummaged through box number 7 and found a colored sketch of Josephine Baker which was striking, there were also postcards distinguished by pictures of Shange I had never seen before, and the suddenly, I found an 8 x 11.5 booklet of wonder. It was the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre (LHT) bulletin of From okra to greens/ a different kind of love story. In their 25th anniversary season the theatre choose to use this work to celebrate African-American History month.
Lorraine Hansbury Theatre (LHT) bulletin of From okra to greens/ a different kind of love story
This packet of paper was beautifully designed. The cover had a woman/ okra that made me consider my own femininity. The features, though under lit, were delicate. The minimal use of color and decision to focus on the layout/ geography of the text, the woman, and the okra was captivating. I am also curious about the three words that follow Shange’s name: love, culture / politics. Shange was present during the rehearsals and completion of this work, so I wonder if she made a special request to have that included.
In addition, the entire item was very meta. It recognized Shange’s work, but also it’s role in fulfilling that work: “The LHT is proud to be a West coast home theatre for Shange.” There was also “a Shange glossary” of words specific to the production that, to me, depicts a responsive and active awareness.
Initially, this task was challenging… to have a whole lot to look through and not to know where to start. However, in letting my gut guide me and my internal, emotional reaction aid my decision making, I became at ease. Funny enough, finding this item helped me solidify some of the ideas for my research project. The consistency of diasporic/ alter(native)-continental words featured in the glossary led me to question artists calling upon and relation to their places of origin, known and unknown.
In if I can Cook/ you KNow God can, Ntozake Shange makes reference to the experience of Brixton, London. “When the sun comes out in Brixton, a heavily West Indian working-class neighborhood, all kinda miracles comes about. Colors challenging visions… winter’s mists and rains dance up and down… the heat remind[ing] everyone of home (23).” In a later paragraph she describes the music, “our music” that would blast from the vegetable stands. The two artists she mentions are YellowMan and Youssour N’Dour.
In the process of searching for ingredients of a American type dinner, Zake and her daughter, Savannah, are thrusts into the intricacies of the Brixton market. They experience this transcontinental, transcultural refiguring through people, food, and most importantly music.
Hearing Zungguzungguguzungguzeng by King YellowMan, a Jamaican reggae DJ, completes the experience of food shopping at brixton. The simple rhythm is easy to sway to and calls upon the minds of those listening in order to bridge the now and the then.
“Seh if yuh have a paper, yuh must have a pen
And if yuh have a start, yuh must have a end…
Jump fe happiness and jump fe joy
Yuh nuh fe call Yellowman nuh bwoy…
All a dem, dem have yellow children
Some live a Kingston and dung a Maypenn”
When I researched the music of the other artist Shange mentioned, Youssour N’Dour, I was immediately struck by the song Souvenirs.
What’s perfect about the music video of this song is that the singer himself is caught in this continual moment of recollection. He’s present in the land that his body is physically in (the house/ the pool), but his mind is engaged with a distant location. He can’t shake the thoughts of this place and takes the viewer and listeners through the process of reimagining/ revisiting homeland. What I love is that this act is celebratory and demands the right to be historicized (i.e. when the singer captures a selfie with someone from his vision). That selfie breaks international bounds. Later on in the video the protagonist sings as he looks at photo albums, dvds, and other items that remind him of the place he is deeply connected to. This same process is similar to that of Ntozake when she cooks, writes recipes that call to her ancestors, and pulls the knowledge her daughter will inherit closer by exposing her to these foods.
* Date of this post corresponds to my music presentation in class.
A certain aura of fantasy is present when we read the different spells featured in the novel as well as digest Indigo’s relationship to her dolls and to the greater neighborhood. This fantasy has a mystic quality, a magic that shows through the lives of Hilda’s daughter. Each child crafts their femininity and therefore life in a way that is alternative from their mother’s. This is a story about family, but more so a collection, a community of women.
Shange integrates the possessions of these women: many letters, instructions for Cypress’ home, recipes, spells, journal entries into the novel perhaps because, as Indigo says, “black people needed so many things.” Our job as a reader is not only absorb the lives of the main characters but also to be engaged in the methods of healing that they follow, which is very much ingrained in these pieces of things. The complete consciousness phrase that Indigo came into was that “black people needed so many things” AND so she would “[make] up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.”
It is this nature of creation, for self, and also for the communal that distinguishes the development of women. One contemporary example of this is the Neo-soul duo band group Oshun which was created in NYC. Their name and their music work to empower women.
Cypress, Sassafrass and Indigo becomes a text where Shange elucidates the experience of African-American women whose lives (though they might be “stuck”) build on and reflect African values: the tradition of the home and cooking, the legacy that a mother passes through to her children, and being “third-world” descendants in various American states. The lives of these four women happens at the same time a slave narrative unfolds. There is also a tie to Nigerian culture that culminates when Sassafrass performs a dance to shake the spirit of Mitch away (because, according to Indigo it “was the spirit of things that mattered (5).” During her dance, Oshun, a supreme divinity, comes to inhabit her body and her step. Moreover, the importance of deities is represented when Shange includes number eight of Cypresses’ house rules: “8. Don’t touch the alter for the Orishas:” minor Nigerian gods. Perfect enough, the name the duo choose as their title honors the work of Yoruba deities in showcasing the virtue of femininity and holiness of womanhood.
In one of their songs, Gyenyame, which means “expect for God/ the supremacy of God,” the duo sings:
“Orishas, we your teachers, open up your eyes and recognize
It’s a, a reason for the demons
Refuse to comply, speak your mind, don’t abide
We the
Orishas, we your teachers, sister deities, the rivers and the seas
Orishas, your teachers, Queens of Africa, Oshun and Yemoja”
The band Oshun more than just calls upon Orishas and embodies them like Sassafrass, they put forward contemporary ideas of African-American empowerment, much of which stems from consciousness. The following video aims to quantify what it means for blacks to be “free somebody[s] (7)” in this moment in time.
When Ntozake Shange came to class we had the privilege of the archivist, the scholar, and the creator all in one room. We had someone to guide us through the materials, we had the written work, we had our own motivation to learn, but most importantly we had the living spring, the touchstone to which we could understand, the body to which we could trace back years of experience and extrapolate an abundance of meaning. With this dynamic it seemed like we could solve all problems and address all nuances of the black experience that may have once slipped by us.
Ntozake Shange in front of Barnard gates (10/23/15)
… (Reflections) … (continue) … (below) …
Much of Shange’s defiance of the Black Arts Movement was because it was for “macho males.” In a similar way she went to alternative dance teachers spaces and because she wanted to learn a dance “other than yoruba.” How did Shange choose which movements to be a part of? Which dance to dance? Was the nature of her defiance simply to move against the grain in every way? I had always wondered about the strategy of rejection and how refusal would effect politics and thus effect history. Shange answered my questions and unearthed the meaning behind her actions by explaining: “When you accept something/ don’t accept, it controls the historical narrative.”
Refusing the Black Arts Movement was a fight for women to not only be considered, but to be recognized as essential to the progress of any black agenda. Learning dances outside of Yoruba, meant that countries which fell outside the demarcations of West Africa could be represented in America and more importantly in the New World, which housed many nations and black aesthetics, that Shange was creating.
The purpose of arts, dance and writing, is to use individual creativity to get to a place where “we [the black collective] can restructure and reconstitute the universe” to be one that is inclusive of us. That is why Shange challenges African Americans to pick up another language, so we are not defaulting to the language of the oppressor. “When you take control of the language, you take control of your life.”
The Spyra piece describes Shange’s Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter and the way in which purposefully using language is an act of distancing one’s self from the historical narrative of slavery and the chains that identify the black body and black life as without form or distinction: “there’s no words for us (Spyra, 765).” In the same way that language breaks the historical narrative, so does dance. Though Shange distances herself from Yoruba dance because it only upholds one African cultural group, the fact that the dance appears in Black American culture is a victory. The distance between continent of origin and the diaspora is closing. The gap of okra and greens becomes tighter. The arts bridges continents and claims a trajectory of history that was stolen. In this video Shange defines black dance as “how we remember what cannot be said.”
The essay “Black Feminist Collectivity in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf” didn’t resonate with me until I got to the 7th paragraph which begins with:”Black women often provide the supplemental, ghostly, and unappreciated labor necessary to maintain the nation-state as an ideal and lived reality.”
The full impact of that line still didn’t hit me until the author talked about the way Beyonce, in singing the national anthem a cappella after being thrown down by press for lip synching it at the presidential inauguration, “reinforced the notion that the black women must pay a national bevy and therefore owe the populace an explanation for the deployment of their bodies.”
