Header Image - The Worlds of Ntozake Shange
The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Dayna Beatty

Thank you, Shange

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I wanted to write a final, reflective blog post surround what I’ve found in the archives, how I’ve come to understand the importance of the archives we have access to and Shange’s contributions to Barnard’s library, and the importance of fair use and copy right laws when it comes to engaging with the materials we use.

I’ve realize through my visits to the archives the incredible courage and confidence it must have taken Shange to leave not just unpublished work or drafts of documents to us, but personal items, in particular personal journals, for public use at an institution. Her decision to do so not only demonstrates her own strength, but also her confidence in the Barnard College community. To trust such a large group of women with this invaluable and private information showcases how much Shange values our college and the education we receive through it. I can’t imagine sharing my personal information in the way that Shange has, and I wish I had the chance to tell her how truly appreciative I am that she has given Barnard this incredible gift. This donation seems to directly embody Shange’s spirit, her generosity, and the courage I hope to one day exude.

During our in-class activity on Thursday, Professor Hall asked us to reflect on what we wish people knew about Shange and what we learned through this course. My answer to both of these question lies within the archives. I wish more people knew about the archives, how accessible they are, and what they have to offer, because through this course, I learned all of this. Prior to taking this course, I had no idea that Barnard was in possession of the archives, that there was so much material in the archives, or that every student has open access to them. I wish more people were aware of them, because I’ve learned so much about Shange, and by extension myself, through self-reflection inspired by Shange, and by visiting and embracing the materials in the archives. I’ve shared this with my close friends, but in the coming semester I am going to make a much larger effort to encourage my peers and members of the various on-campus organizations I’m a part of to visit and use the archives—that’s what they are there for! We cannot truly appreciate the gift that Shange has given us if we aren’t taking advantage of it regularly.

 

Finally, I wanted to touch on the importance of fair use and copy right, and the need to understand them both. Personally, my concept of these ideas was very surface-level prior to the workshops we had with professionals who deal with these issues every day. The people that produce the works that we are using for this course, our scalar projects and for our educational betterment at large, worked hard to produce the materials they did. It is important to acknowledge and thank the original creators and those that inspire us. I’m grateful that this course gave me a better understanding of these concepts, because these are lessons that I will take with me beyond this class whenever I engage with and use materials that I have not personally created.

For the tech component, I wanted to include a list of Tweets that came out after Shange’s death, of people remembering her spirit and her work. However, there were so many, I would like to invite anyone reading this to check out this link from a website that celebrates and informs women of color, in addition to visiting twitter and filtering for tweets that use the #shange at the end of October.

What’s in a Name ?

by Dayna Beatty 2 Comments

This course has facilitated my understanding of myself, not just as a student or a feminist, but as a combination of all my identity markers in connection to my studies. As a Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies major, the first thing I think about whenever I consider myself in relationship to anything—be that academic or personal, is my feminism. As a result of my personal values and the ways that I have been trained to think as a student of my chosen discipline, my way of thinking revolves around questions of sex and gender. However, despite being a member of the feminism movement, I am also a heavy critic of feminism and its practices and policies. When I discuss my feminism, I feel that it is important to note that I come from an intersectional and transnational perspective. A lack of these two notions are my two biggest issues with the mainstream feminist movement that limit it’s potential for success. To me, intersectional feminism is about the consideration and incorporation of individual identity markers that work together to produce a more informed and inclusive type of feminist practice. Among these include race, gender, socio-economic background, ability status, family makeup, carrier status, etc., each of which functions as a different facet to inform a feminist ideology. Transnational, for me, means incorporating and adapting feminism to fit into the context of a particular physical or geographical location. Our class conversations have, in the past, noted the difference and challenges of acknowledging borders as a marker of physical difference and a way of facilitating the recognition of social and cultural different. Simultaneously, there is a need to disregard borders to unite women across the world under a similar plight. Too much of an emphasis on border risks creating a physical, state-centric model for understanding transnational feminism, but not enough of a border risks essentializing the experiences of women and reducing them to a single narrative. For me, transnational feminism simply implies an understanding of the social and cultural differences that produce variant lived experiences among women around the world. These differences can then be used to formulate new kinds of feminism to fit the particular needs of women located in particular locations and cultures. To me, my feminism an intersectional and transnational feminism, informed by my personal identity.

My personal identity is hinged on my family background and my race. My father is white and has lived in American his whole life. My mother is Japanese and her entire family still resides in Japan. She is the only member of her family to immigrate to another country and one of the few in her family that speak English. As a result, to my mom and the rest of my Japanese family, I am a first-generation, English-speaking, American citizen. On the other side, my father’s family is all deceased, which means growing up and to this day, my largest familial ties are those to my Japanese family. Therefor, my understanding of my family and our background is dominated by my Japanese side, which has largely informed my position in this world. I was younger, it was easier to incorporate my Japanese heritage into my everyday life because it was my experience at home, living with my mom as my primary care-taker, and all my friends at school knew about my family. However in college, I’ve noticed I have to make a much larger effort to continue to identify with my Japanese side, especially as a white-passing individual. At university, the conscious effort I make to celebrate my heritage and incorporate my identity into the world’s understanding of me is a key part of my college experience. This course has allowed me to understand the ways that my personal identity informs my daily lived experience, and the way that I can harness my understanding of myself to further enrich my academic studies. There is a trend in university studies to stray away from using the personal to inform academia, but this course allowed me to realize that my identity is critical to my understanding of the world, and therefor my chosen field of study, and is something to celebrate.

The terms I mentioned that inform my identity and my feminism are all ones that I believe are critical to discussing the work of radical women who fought for feminist issues in the 1970s and 80s. Transnational and intersectional are both terms that were not widely used at the time of this work, but as a scholar looking back on the work of these women, I think it is important to dig through the dominant white, second-wave feminism to understand and share the work of women who embraced ideas of transnational and intersectional feminism before these terms were common place. Similarly, being bi-racial, particularly Japanese, makes me keenly interested in the work of the women of this time who came out of an incredibly hostile environment of Japanese internment, which (on paper) concluded just 25 years prior.

My mother’s experience being denied by customs when she first attempted to immigrate to the United States over 25 years ago on baseless claims that she was “suspicious,” and her struggle to obtain citizenship over the past four years serves as a constant reminder of the work that Japanese and bi-racial activists during the 1970s and 1980s, an idea that my final project will explore. My final project will incorporate details about the Japanese feminist movement in the 1970s, which is called ūman ribu. This movement is critical to understand the work of Japanese feminists at the time, and helps to inform the experiences of Japanese women living in both Japan and the United States at the time. The unique element of Japanese feminism is rooted in the countries historical (and contemporary) deeply patriarchal society. This is where it is important to understand difference through a transnational perspective. Japanese society differs greatly from US society in that ideas of patriarchy, male-dominance, and gender roles are so deeply engrained in society, it is difficult to even notice it among daily life there. Not that in the United States this is not the case, but having spent time in both nations, I firmly believe Japan is a society founded and supported by an incredibly patriarchal system, so much more than is the case in the US. Therefore, in order to understand ūman ribu as a woman whose exposure to feminism has been western-centric, it is key to first understand the underlying difference between our society and that in Japan. Understanding these two terms, intersectional and transnational, will be critical in analyzing the work of Japanese feminist activists in the 1970s and 80s in my final project.

Change Makers

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I enjoyed reading Harryette Mullen’s article after having read Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo because it helped me contextualize the text and understand its importance and the nuances to the story. The article emphasizes how intersectional and approachable the text is, and I found myself agreeing with Mullen’s comments.

Mullen writes that Shange is best known for being a poet, but that this novel includes “narrative, poetry, drama, letters, recipes, folklore, and magic spells.” (Mullen 206) Each of these different mediums, with the exception of narrative, on their own may not seem as approachable or cohesive, but how Shange puts them together in her novel makes it easy for readers to see each of these different platforms as a part of a whole.

The book is intersectional in several ways. Firstly, the topic of the story is intersectional in that it describes an intersectional experience, the “emergence of black feminist consciousness within communities of bohemian artists in the 1970s.” (Mullen 205) The novel is also intersectional in its approach to storytelling—through the use of over five different mediums Shange not only puts together a beautiful piece of literature, but celebrates the many ways in which writers choose to share their stories. The subjects of this story are also intersectional, from sharing Indigo’s journey at home to her sisters Cypress and Sassafrass’s stories as they journey away to find themselves and explore their respective passions of dance and art, the novel itself incorporates three different lives into one.

The piece of digital media that I included for this week’s post seemed appropriate to me for two reasons. The poet who wrote this piece was the first person that introduced me to spoken word poetry. Prior to hearing her work, I had never before experienced spoken word and my knowledge of poetry was very limited. She opened my eyes to a world of expression that I had previously never thought much of. Secondly, this piece combines spoken word with both music and cinematography.  In keeping with the theme of intersectional mediums, I wanted to include this piece as an example of a combination of platforms through which artists can communicate a message.

Azure Antoinette says, “we cling to the past, we cling to the normal we cling to the useful, accessible information, we define ourselves by those that have come before us, what they did or did not accomplish… you are your history.” In the first portion of the poem, she emphasizes embracing your past, but not defining ourselves solely based on the past. She continues her poem by saying, “You are a change maker… so when people ask you who you are, tell them you are a vessel, that your job is desperately trying to make the next Sistine Chapel with your hands tied behind your back and your eyes closed. Tell them you are working on creating a positive social system… when someone asks you how you are, them ‘em, I’m brilliant. When they as you where are you, tell them, I’m architecting change.” The purpose of this poem is for listeners to understand that your past is a part of you, but you are also an agent of change. Shange, throughout her written work and her life story, demonstrates how everybody can be a change maker, regardless of who you are.

Love and Emotion in Revolution

by Dayna Beatty 0 Comments

“Feelings of love are fundamental in revolutionary practice.” (Havlin 81)

 

Paired with each other, these readings seem to reach the same conclusion: for revolution to be inclusive and effective, love must be present. Love therefor leads to intersectionality—appreciation and recognition for everyone within a movement produces the most inclusive and thus, successful, activism possible. Both pieces call readers to acknowledge the hierarchical nature of humanity—both transnationally and within communities. Havlin writes, “Vasquez identifies self-awareness about power inequalities among colonized people as necessary components of building collaborations across social and national borders.” (Havlin 91) Essentially, she concludes that power dynamics are present not just between the colonizer and the colonized, but among the colonized as well. There is no society void of some form of hierarchy that is driven by different forms of oppression. Similarly, Thompson writes, “a recognition that race cannot be seen in binary terms; a recognition that racism exists in your backyard as well as in the countries the US is bombing or inhabiting economically.” (Thompson 349) Ideas about race produce stereotypes that are present not just among the dominant, western, white group but also among minority groups. Hierarchies do not simply exist between the dominant group and the “other”—to believe that this is the case when performing activism is a reductionist approach that makes it difficult to recognize other forms of oppression—be they race based or based upon something else.

 

Havlin’s piece calls readers to recognize the importance of love and emotion in activism. To recognize emotion in activism was an interesting analytical approach that, up until now, I had never considered. The texts I have read thus far have not stressed how important emotion it is, and I theorize that is due to the fact that feminists are hesitant to acknowledge their emotions out of fear of ratifying the stereotype that women are “emotion.” However, as stated earlier in the piece, love (an emotion) is necessary for revolution.  This idea also encompasses the need to recognize other forms of oppression alongside the feminist fight. As Thompson’s history of Second Wave Feminism exposes, effective and inclusive feminism is not simply limited to a woman versus man binary. It is recognizing that there many different forms of oppression and privilege that work together to form a person’s positionality. Thompson writes that it is necessary for a white woman to recognize her  “position as both oppressed and oppressor— as both women and white.” (Thompson 342) Ultimately, including love and emotion and recognizing hierarchies among even homogenous groups produces a “cross-racial sisterhood” that is “powerful.” (Thompson 347) Intersectionality includes gender and race, but also class, education, ability status, and hundreds more identifiers. In order to create a movement that offers the highest potential for success, activists must love and acknowledge all of these identifiers.

 

I chose to include the following video a TED talk given by one of the first women to coin the term “intersectional.” Whenever I explain intersectional feminism to people who’ve only been exposed to white feminism (as mentioned directly in Thompson’s piece), I refer them to this video. I felt the exercise she does at the very beginning of this piece in particular to be incredibly demonstrative of the dangers that activism which lacks an intersectional approach produces.

When Sorry is Not Enuf

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

Of Ntozake’s pieces we’ve read so far, this one was my favorite. In particular, I loved the words of the character “Lady in Blue.” The first of her monologues, on page 12 was incredibly powerful. The words Ntozake chose, “puddle,” “waters,” “circlin,” “bleed,” all have a certain momentum to them that implies fluidity and movement. However, she also describes an encounter with someone who is verbally assaulting her on the street. This sort of interaction, one that is all too familiar for any woman that has walked the streets of New York at dark, is a powerful reminder of the constant pressure to submit. A daily call to behave a certain way and allow one’s self to become subject to another’s orders.

 

The idea of being trapped in the “six blocks of cruelty” that for this character is home was physically immobilizing. The “tunnel closing,” the closed doors, the sun not shining, all of these words that restrict space make readers feel as though they too are trapped within the mind of this character. The use of physically fluid language in the first monologue compared to the language in the second one are polar opposites. Ntozake goes from describing “a tunnel with a train” to a “tunnel closing,” a situation that includes mobility and one that does not. These two speeches by this character in proximity to each other produce an extra emphasis on the feelings of entrapment she describes.

 

Towards the end of one of the last monologues by the Lady In Blue, Ntozake writes about the concept of sorry. “I’m not even sorry/ bout you bein sorry you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna/ just don’t give it to me/ I can’t use another sorry.” This line was my favorite from this book. The burden on women to accept an apology for something that someone else did is not only indicative of the gendered climate we live in today, but also demonstrative of the unpaid mental labor that women are asked to do everyday. To accept an apology, to move on, to stop letting one event affect you for the rest of your life, to do the work to make someone else feel better about themselves.  With all the media coverage around sexual assault and a growing acceptance for vocalizing past experiences, this idea of “sorry” is prevalent. Along with the burden of reliving the trauma of sexual assault is the burden of accepting the “sorry” of someone else. Sorry is a word that does nothing for the survivor but only serves to alleviate the guilt of the aggressor.

 

Retracing Roots

by Dayna Beatty 2 Comments

Ntozake shared the stories of the women in her life that taught her what it means to be a strong, independent woman. Coming away from her talk, I felt a renewed sense of appreciate for the women in my life. I went home from that talk realizing two powerful forces that have affected me—my mother and my education. But what struck me most from Ntozake’s talk was the need to reflect on the village that works together to bring each of those forces to fruition.

 

My mother is one of the strongest women I know. At age 16 she made a personal decision that I could not even imagine making as a full grown, adult woman. At age 25 she left the only country she’d ever known to come to America to build an entirely new life for herself. She raised my brother and I to be humble and appreciative for everything we have, because she gave up everything to give it to us. And now, past the age of fifty, my mother has become the most solid force in my life. It is thanks to her that I found the strength to make some of the most challenging decisions and get through the most difficult of times. It is thanks to her that I know what a strong woman looks like—someone who isn’t afraid to step outside the lines and create her own path.

 

My education is very much the same way. After hearing Ntozake talk, I felt incredibly lucky to be apart of a community of women that has such a strong sense of legacy. From her mention of the panty raids, to the contemporary activism I see on campus today, I realize how proud I am to call Barnard College my home. Through this institution, I have discovered myself. I have learned how to be like the woman who raised me. I have learned that there is nothing more powerful than a woman with a mission on her mind—because I see that around me every day.

 

Ntozake’s advice was to reach out to the communities that have helped shape us, and use the gift of this education we receive to affect change. In the days since Ntozake’s talk, I’ve been making a daily conscious effort to do this. I share articles, stories, and lessons I’ve learned in classes with my mother. I ask her to share these with her network of women who have supported her. I have begun to write a letter to my mother’s mother, something I never imagined I’d be able to do because my tongue speaks a different language than hers does. Using mangled hiragana letters, dictionaries, and elementary-grade vocabulary, I’ve managed to piece together a paragraph written in my own words. For the first time in my life, I’m taking the steps to communicate with a role-model in my life who, up until now, I’ve only been able to speak with through other people. I’m learning the power of my own voice, through inspiration from Ntozake. In thinking of a final project, I’d like to incorporate my heritage as a first-generation American on my mom’s side and my bi-racial identity into whatever I choose to produce as my culminating assignment for this course.

Feminism and Fanon

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I really enjoyed reading Fanon’s chapter “Algeria Unveiled” from his book A Dying Colonialism. Having read his article knowing that I was going to transform his words into a poem “Shange style,” gave me a new appreciation for his words. Personally, I find reading pieces by theorists like Marx and Foucault quite difficult because the writing is not as approachable as some other more contemporary authors. I expected Fanon’s work to be much of the same but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed this piece in particular—specifically, the style of it. Fanon discusses the Western notion that women who wear the veil are in need of saving and how this idea has become militarized to justify white intervention in the Middle East. In previous courses I have read Lila Abu-Lughod’s “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” and this piece echoed the sentiment of contemporary Middle Eastern scholars, which was refreshing to read from a male scholar writing in 1965. He describes how the veil is understood in the West as a mechanism of oppression, and by intervening in the Algeria and “saving” these women, they were “symbolically unveiled.” (Fanon 42) However, from the perspective of the colonized this symbolic unveiling can also be understood as rape—of both body and culture. What the colonizer understands as “freedom,” (as motivated by military goals,) the colonized sees this same action as an expression of violence against a physical and mental space. Fanon writes, in regards to the “saving” of Algerian women by the colonizers, “every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier, was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer.” (Fanon 43) Essentially, that the unveiling of women was the acceptance of colonization and one’s position as subordinate to the colonizer. Fanon then explores the effect of this, which was the choice to employ women in the fight against the colonizer. Fanon writes that “this decision to involve women in active elements of the Algerian Revolution was not reached lightly” and that at the start, female involvement in the war was restricted to “married women whose husbands were militants,” then gradually expanded to include “widows or divorced women.” (Fanon 51) Eventually, the volunteering of unmarried girls grew so high that “the political leaders…. Removed all restrictions to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women.” (Fanon 51) While unveiling of women was a violent action in the name of Western perceptions of freedom, this permission to fight against the colonizer was the type of freedom that Algerian woman wanted. Fanon illuminates the key difference between Western perceptions of freedom and what women in Algeria truly want.

 

Women then became an instrumental part of the war and proved to be key militants in the fight against colonization. Fanon spends the later portion of his piece describing how it is that these Western stereotype of “innocence” among women who wear the veil was then militarized by Algerian women in their fight for independence. By mobilizing notions of femininity and its stereotypical ties to weakness and the veil, Algerian women became key players in the resistance, unassuming soldiers that were able to infiltrate European’s by using their own misinformed notions against them.

 

The idea of “saving women” at the surface level can be understood as feminist as freeing an entire country of women from the oppressive man, but in actuality, the story is quite different, and this is what Fanon attempts to make clear. The veil is a garment worn by women throughout history. It is just as anti-feminist to force a woman to wear a veil as it is to force her not to wear the veil. By forcing women to remove the veil, woman by woman, “piece by piece, the flesh of Algeria laid bare.” (Fanon 32) This physical removal of a garments, against the will of the wearer, is extremely possessive, dangerous, and anti-feminist. Fanon does the work of demonstrating how this is the case, and in my opinion his work can be understood as an attempt at an early, male’s feminist critique of colonialism.

 

Having read Shange’s works and understanding her emphasis on movement in literature, I began to see that in Fanon’s work as well. His piece is written in a very approachable and lyrical way, yet his words reflect the mood of the piece. His words of conquer are violent and the language he picks to illuminate this are visible throughout this piece. He uses words like “flesh,” “eroticism,” “brutality,” and “sadism” throughout his piece to evoke a feeling of forced entry—encroachment on physical space and culture. I tried to use the same type of forceful language throughout my poem to produce the same kind of effect. This exercise demonstrated to me how important a “mood” of a piece is—how choosing very specific words have a certain effect that is a deliberate choice made by the author to make the readers feel a certain way.

Feminism through “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now”

by Dayna Beatty 0 Comments

As a Women’s Studies major, I’ve been trained to conduct readings with a feminist lens in mind. Ntozake calls for a God who “bleeds” in her piece, “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now.” This was my favorite piece from her collection of poems entitled A Daughters Geography because it not only challenged traditional, male-oriented ideas about religion, but it pushed back against the historically negative perceptions surrounding menstruation. It suggests that bleeding is a sign of strength rather than weakness. In times past, menstruation was seen as shameful, in some cultures a reason to be sent away from the community, and on an everyday basis, a cause of anxiety and discomfort. Our contemporary climate is not entirely void of this conception, but it has since improved. However, Ntozake’s evocation of menstruation in her piece “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” suggests that “that time of the month” should not be something shameful, but rather something to be idealized. She writes, “I am/ not wounded I am bleeding to life.” This line resonated with me because it opposes the idea that menstruation is a sign of “dying” within the body but rather, that it is an indication of fertility and femininity—not something that would be hated but rather an characteristic that we should want a God to emanate.

 

Similarly, to state that society needs a female God means that in this particular moment, there is nothing more crucial that to have a female leader. To specifically necessitate a female God rightfully challenges the dominant religious God, a Protestant and Christian religion deeply entrenched in hegemonic, masculine ideologies. I would also go so far as to say that this God is not strictly religious, but rather a governing figure over the world that we require. The message that this piece sends to readers is both powerful and brave.