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

Ariel Leachman

Language and Poetry..for colored girls

by Ariel Leachman 0 Comments

The play deals with a variety of adult topics such as abortion and rape that would make it difficult to teach in its entirety in a high school. The language is also quite graphic in places. Yet, it’s so real, raw and emotional that I just want to share it with my students at the same time. For example, there’s a scene, told by three of the women at once, discussing date rape, that starts, “a friend is hard to press charges against/if you know him/you must have wanted it.” It continues, “ticket stubs from porno flicks in his pocket/a lil dick/or a strong mother/or just a brutal virgin…lock the door behind you/wit fist in face/to fuck…who make elaborate mediterranean dinners/& let the art ensemble carry all ethical burdens/while they invite a coupla friends over to have you/are sufferin from latent rapist bravado/& we are left wit the scars.”  The intensity of Shange’s words, language and diction makes the experience of reading an personal and intimate violation like abortion and rape harsher. Through her words I feel like I am the protagonist, as I feel all the emotions and tensions that exists throughout each poem. I started writing a journal recently and thanks to Shange, I have started to explore my own truth in the ways that I confide in myself though writing. For so long my personal diaries and journals were polished and felt like I couldn’t be honest with myself. In For Colored Girls… I started to appreciate the value of healing through honesty of emotion and sincerity with myself first. I am interested in how Shange shifted the “explicitness” in poetry. I am not well educated on the history of feminist poetry, but I would assume that Shange contributed a lot to the way Black women wrote in poems as expressive as she does.

 

Intersectionality

by Ariel Leachman 0 Comments

Like in our discussion two weeks ago on “dismantling the patriarchy” it is not possible without the influences of masculinity and how the dominant cultural forces of patriarchy. There is a continual challenge to include all identities in In the same way there is a challenge for our understanding of feminism to capture all identities, as feminism in my view is a localized experience. The fight for “equality” for women is not only racially or socioeconomically specific; but it is also grounded in one’s own experience through culture, ethnicity and personal encounter with their identity as a woman or as other. However, our readings highlight an important effort in the theory of feminism and how it is important to consider the intersectional influences and effects. Without an intersectional lens movements cannot fully fight oppression. Racism for women of color cannot be separated from their gendered oppression.

From an artistic lens, I think that Shange captures this challenge of intersectionality. Her work, and the works of many racially diverse feminist artist draw parallels of the plight of black women and people of color; yet they are able to capture the distinct and unique experience of black women and women of color. One modern artist that I appreciate is Mickalene Thomas. Her art is a process of revisiting and recreating art centered and focused on black women.

Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo

by Ariel Leachman 0 Comments

Shange and this writer, is measured in the impact it made on Black women’s lives. I am still in the mindset of dissecting For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf . I think looking at that text in tandem with Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo is a celebration of both cultural and gender identity in Shange’s work. It is intended by Shange as a handbook for Black girls in order to understand their own lives and Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo seems to be the possibilities that exists through the same healing she talks about in “For colored girls…”.

Shange uses the analogy of a “layin on of hands,” to suggest healing through the support of other women. It is clear within the poem as Sbange writes, ‘hot a man,” and “not my mama,” that she is asking women to pull themselves up fom the ground. The power to continue and hd one’s self must come fom inside a Black woman, and not fom society. Society does not offer a woman control, but rather a feeling of powerlessness. One of the last phrases written in the play is an affirmation for Black women and it gives them power, “I found god in mysew & I loved her/ I loved her fiercely.” The very last line of the play restates Shange intentions, “& this is for colored girls who have considered suicide but are movin to the ends of their own rainbows”. The text sends the message to love and heal yourself because nobody else can do it for you. In the end, the friendships are renewed, as these women do not need this man, but rather each other. This celebrates the Black woman’s ability to support each other in the light of personal tragedy. Therefore, Shange’s perspective views women’s lives and bodies as a source of power and vision; she creates a memorable mystical woman of power in the youthful Indigo in Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. Indigo’s experiences argue against the concept of menstruation as “the curse” and present it as a part of the legacy and beauty of womanhood.

 

A New Vision of Feminism

by Ariel Leachman 1 Comment

Like in our discussion two weeks ago on “dismantling the patriarchy” it is not possible without the influences of masculinity and how the dominant cultural forces of patriarchy. There is a continual challenge to include all identities in In the same way there is a challenge for our understanding of feminism to capture all identities, as feminism in my view is a localized experience. The fight for “equality” for women is not only racially or socioeconomically specific; but it is also grounded in one’s own experience through culture, ethnicity and personal encounter with their identity as a woman or as other. However, our readings highlight an important effort in the theory of feminism and how it is important to consider the intersectional influences and effects. Without an intersectional lens movements cannot fully fight oppression. Racism for women of color cannot be separated from their gendered oppression.

From an artistic lens, I think that Shange captures this challenge of intersectionality. Her work, and the works of many racially diverse feminist artist draw parallels of the plight of black women and people of color; yet they are able to capture the distinct and unique experience of black women and women of color. One modern artist that I appreciate is Mickalene Thomas. Her art is a process of revisiting and recreating art centered and focused on black women.

 

 

 

Shange’s Visit to Barnard

by Ariel Leachman 1 Comment

I attended the talk in the Diana where Ntozake Shange discussed Black Dance. Her words were sto powerful as she described her experience in dance classes with some of the most renowned dancers during the Black Arts Movement. What stood out to me was Shange’s emphasis on the dancers Blackness and how that was not only an integral part to the movement and choreography but to the significance to the diaspora as well as the continent of Africa in the formation of new movements through these dance instructors and influencers. A point in the conversation that was very enriching was Shange’s description of Ottis Sallid and the way that his movement dispelled the stereotypes of a Black man as being a predator and intimidating. Rather, Ottis was gentle, meek, smart, graceful as a dancer who also interact physically with the female body. I think Black bodies and Black dance is so unique and special; but also so important to the healing process for Black people. As a Caribbean descent American, I am well familiar and take part in dance that feels freeing in the most intimate and physical ways with Black men. From dancehall to afrobeats, movement and the interaction of the Black male and female body. My experience recently going to The Shrine in Harlem felt like an epicenter for healing through the form of Blackness in dance and the intimacy of the Black male body interacting with others.  Shange’s remarks were so vivid and captured the importance of revering and survival of Black bodies and Black dance.

nappy edges: the struggle for black womanhood

by Ariel Leachman 0 Comments

As I think about the title nappy edges it was interesting to me as to think about the physical challenge of nappy edges to conform to one’s hair in away that is contained and socially proper. In a way, Shange draws parallels in the black woman’s experience as a poet and as a women to the dilemma of nappy edges when she writes about the restrictions of womanhood that persist with women because of the societal masculine pressures of conformity and acceptance. Shange explores how traditional gender dynamics can exclude women. Through love and relationships as spaces where women should be able to seek their own pleasure, sexual or in motherhood. For Shange, womanhood can sometimes act as a double edge sword in that sex and love can either torment or uplift women. These selection of poems in nappy edges push back against the way in which black women have been allowed a single, monolithic voice and experience. What I appreciate about this piece is the emphasis of self care and love through sexuality, poetry and femininity.

 

For my digital piece I selected a spoken word performance by one of my favorite poets in the arts collective Strivers Row. In this performance Alysia talks about the labels, restrictions on her womanhood by men. Her experience discusses how women are expected to behave and in a sense a form of respectability politic for black women that is created by black men. I enjoyed that at the end of the poem Alysia identifies her identity as a poet and as a woman in her existence stripped away from the labels by the men; yet still she faces challenges of self doubt and questioning her self worth. This poem carried many parallels to the themes in nappy edges in a modern and revived ways from the words and poetry of Shange during the 1970s.

“My Pen is a Machete”: Transforming English

by Ariel Leachman 1 Comment

it is most clear during

lovemaking

when the separation of everyday life lifts for a while/

when a kiss/ and a stroke/ and enter my lover

i am also a child re-entering my mother. . .

i want to return/ to a womb-state of harmony/ and also to the ancient world

i enter my lover

but it is she in her orgasm who returns

i see her face for a long moment/ the unconscious bliss that an infant carries/

the memory of behind its shut eyes.

then when it is she who makes love to me. . .

the intensity/ is also pushing out

a borning!

she comes in/ and is then identified

with the ecstasy that is born. . .

So i too return to the mystery of my mother/and of the world

as it must have been

when the motherbond was exalted.

 

Going through this exercise of rewriting prose as if it were a poem  required me to thing through the purpose of each word, and its significance within a sentence and its purpose. The use of pauses through punctuation is a process that took many attempts to figure out the impact of the word as a function of the authors message. In my decision to create a poem of emotion with the prose from Rich’s “Of Woman Born”, I chose to also create a structural relationship of the words. Each sentence that Rich creates in her prose is a completion of an idea or a continuation of words that relate to one another. In this week’s reading from Shange in ” My Pen is a Machete, she creates intentional responses of the reader to the words in her poems through the pauses in the form of “/” or breaks in stanzas. While reading the pauses made me focus in on particular words and how they related to her overall message in the poem. When re-writing my prose I created the purposeful meaning and emotion of words that otherwise was not captured in prose form, but became more vivid in the form of poetry.