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

Elizabeth

i found god at the public – event post

by Elizabeth 1 Comment

“for colored girls” at the public theater, 2019

Seeing for colored girls was one of the most special theatrical experiences I’ve ever had. I was initially nervous about sitting onstage and engaging so intimately with the material. I think if we’d gone to the show at the beginning of the semester, I probably would not have been able to do it. After this whole semester of getting to know Shange’s work, I feel more comfortable in engaging with these ideas. I have really started to realize the source of my original discomfort. I think there was something about for colored girls that made me feel helpless when I was younger- I felt that Black women’s pain was inevitable- at the hands of society and the government, at the hands of Black men we are supposed to trust.

Throughout the semester I’ve told my mom and some of my friends that it’s so frustrating for me to be taking this class now, just a year after Shange passed. As grateful as I am to have the opportunity to read her work at all, it often feels like I just missed her. I think that night finally showed me that for colored girls came right when I needed it. Being required to read (and finally finish) the choreopoem for this class finally got me to the incredibly important ending- Shange and the colored girls’ declaration that is just as much an imperative – i found god in myself and i loved her / i loved her fiercely.

shange for the people!

by Elizabeth 2 Comments

i realized that i wrote differently and more forcefully after

class / that the movements propelled the language and/or the

language propelled the dance / it is possible to start a phrase with

a word and end with a gesture / that’s how i’ve lived my life /

that’s how i continue to study / produce black art.

Reading “why i had to dance” so early in the semester was so important to my initial understanding of Shange. I came to the class knowing very little about her. I basically just knew that she’d written for colored girls and that she was a Barnard alumna. In these short pages, I felt like I learned so much about Shange- her passions, her family and upbringing, her love for dance, how she connects all of these aspects of her life and her art. In a way, I think of this as being an autobiography that allows us to learn about her as a person, rather than what you would see in a bio that would just include major life moments and accomplishments. This piece really provided me with the context on who Shange was that would be so crucial to my understanding of and connecting with her work throughout the rest of the semester. I can imagine that Barnard faculty (particularly those who may not know much about Shange beyond for colored girls) would really benefit from having this piece in the collection. This would provide everyone with an understanding of her life and work that could foreground later conversations, particularly since this collection of work will be focusing on texts outside of her most famous and well-known ones. The pieces does not only highlight the common themes of  dance, poetry, geography, race, and familial relations that are present in Shange’s writing, but it also emphasizes the way that Shange connecting these types of art.

cook by faith, not by sight

by Elizabeth 3 Comments

 

I have always loved to cook. When I was younger, I loved helping my parents prepare for family holiday meals, whether that meant sticking my finger in the bowl to “test” the red velvet cake icing for Christmas, or helping my dad season the burgers on the grill on the Fourth of July. At the time, I don’t think I really processed how important food was to my family. It was culture and community. Like Shange writes, it was a celebration. It was love.

When I got to college, the importance of cooking became clear to me because I was no longer able to enjoy food in the same way. Not only did I not have my family to eat with or the type of food I was used to, but I also did not have a personal kitchen. Not having home-cooked meals is something that I think the majority of college students miss, but I also didn’t feel like I had an easy replacement. There aren’t many places in New York that have food that is both Southern and Black, and I can’t exactly afford to eat out all the time.

my mom’s mac and cheese recipe.

Once I moved to Plimpton and had my own kitchen, I was finally able to start cooking again. I realized almost immediately that there were so many things that I couldn’t quite remember how to make, or had never made without my mom. I got mad at her for being vague and she told me, “I don’t know how to tell you to make your mac and cheese, you have to figure it out.” Reading if i can cook reminded me of all of this. The book connects stories, history to the recipes, which I think is so crucial to the way that many cultures connect with food and cooking, and more importantly, the way that we use these things to connect with each other across generations and distance.

Out solution has been Facetime. She too far away to put her hand over mine as I pour ingredients into a mixing bowl, but she can watch me through the camera and tease me about not “folding” my noodles the right way.

photographs – archive find

by Elizabeth 1 Comment

Both times we’ve gone to the archives, I’ve been grabbed by some of the most mundane items. I initially expected to be excited by seeing things like her medals, awards, and accommodations. While these items are fascinating and only add to my respect for Shange as an artist and activist, I have been more intrigued with items related to her personal life.  I’ve enjoyed looking at the items that are more related to her personal life.

On Thursday, I spent a lot of time looking through her photo albums and letters. I was really intrigued with the photos of her daughter, Savannah. Some of them are clearly taken at big events like birthday celebrations, but some of them seem to be in very average, regular, every day moments.

my 5th birthday

 

I started to think about the function of pictures. They are often aesthetic and artistic, but they are also largely for memory and preservation. It makes me wonder what prompted someone to take these pictures and what makes a “Kodak moment.”

I’m not really sure I have a definite answer, but it has made me think back to the themes of ancestry and honoring what came before that is so present in Shange’s work. Considering the gaping holes in history resulting from colonization and imperialism, it is the mere act of taking photos of the every day can be a method of resistance. Taking pictures preserves these histories, and even says that our lives are worth remembering.

 

 

 

Works Cited:

Ntozake Shange Papers, 1966-2016; Box and Folder; Barnard Archives and Special Collections, Barnard Library, Barnard College. http://collections.barnard.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/377 Accessed November 7, 2019.

the meaning of legacy

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“Ultimately, as all people of progressive politic do, we wrote this book for you- the next generation, and the next one. Your lives are so vast before you- you whom the popular culture has impassively termed “Millennials.” But I think the women of Bridge would’ve simply called you, “familia” – our progeny, entrusting you with the legacy of our thoughts and activism, in order to grow them into a flourishing planet and a just world.”

– Cherríe Moraga

my grandmothers in august 2017. this was taken after my senior speech.

The past few months, I have been thinking a lot about my own history and how this has informed who, what, and where I am today. Some of this has taken a very literal sense, such as trying to uncover the names of my enslaved ancestors. In a more abstract sense, I’ve also been trying to understand more of the histories of people who may not be related to me by blood, but are connected to me through culture, tradition, and spirit.

 

 

While reading the new introduction to This Bridge Called My Back, I almost laughed at Moraga’s excerpt she included from a letter she wrote to Barbara Smith. In it, she talks about how uncomfortable her own experience was listening to Shange present her work, and how it caused Moraga to realize that in her “development as a poet, [she has], in many ways, denied the voice of [her] brown mother” (26). Neither this, nor the conversation about her physical discomfort was necessarily funny to me, but it seemed ridiculously ironic that this is not only what I was feeling at the beginningof the semester when reading Shange, but it is also how I felt going to Moraga’s talk at Barnard a few months ago.

This to me only emphasizes the solidarity and commonality that Moraga, Shange, and the other folks that contributed to Bridge write about. Our struggles, love, and consciousness can come from different places and times, but are ultimately united. Those Shange learned from brought her to influence Moraga, who both influence me. I will never actually know them, just like I will never know those in my personal history that have influenced me too. Now, I believe that literally knowing them is not what constitutes our relationship, but it is hearing their stories, remembering their legacies, and carrying their work forward to grow the “flourishing planet and just world.”

1976 and 2019

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The 70s are an elusive decade to me. I was taught in school to associate it with the elimination of racism. Even at home, a lot of my older relatives focused more on the changes that had been made in their lifetimes, and almost seemed to confine ugliness the past and ignore it in the present.

american son marquee

It is interesting to think about the different shows like “American Son” that have occupied the same space as for colored girls, especially ones that also focus on Black women.

Springer calls attention to the histories of Black feminism that is often left out of history in saying, “[…] The mainstream and black press vilified black women writers, in particular, Wallace and Shange. However, these women are considered pioneers of the contemporary black feminist movement for daring to assert, if not ideologically feminist consciousness, a gender consciousness integral to the struggle for black liberation in the 1970s.” When I read this sentence, my mind went to what I had just seen scrolling through Facebook- the Public’s revival of for colored girls has just been named a NYT Critic’s Pick. Granted, Ben Brantley should not be held as the authority on what constitutes good theatre, but it is hard to conceptualize that a piece centering women of color has gone from being highly criticized (while still successful, I should note), to being a work that seems to be a part of the theatrical canon.

However, I think focusing solely on these successes can be dangerous. On one hand, I think it can be a form of self-protection, similar to what I think my relatives who had survived Jim Crow have done. However, I think it’s important to think critically about the successes and the reasons behind them. It seems that right now in the “post-2016” mindset, people are desperate to prove that they aren’t like that, whatever that is. While I wasn’t around to see the original production, I also wonder what has been left out of history, just like the Black feminists Springer writes about, that would explain why the theatrical women of color were so well-received while women of color in real life were not. I wonder if in 40 years, people will be unlearning and relearning the history of Black feminists, both of the 1970s and of the 2010s. Will they remember why it is so important for this for colored girls to be happening, and to be happening now? Will they know that the audiences are often filled with wealthy, white patrons of the Public who are trying to make America post-racial again? Will they know about Shange’s life and struggles? Will they know about mine?

representation and purpose

by Elizabeth 1 Comment

In the podcast “Seeing Yourself in the Archives,” one of the students says, “one of the most important things is to see yourself represented and find purpose, and also heal.” It was interesting to hear representation framed in this way because I typically encounter the term in reference to how vast the lack of representation of marginalized folks is in media, academia, or other spheres is. We typically talk about the costs of lack of representation- negative stereotypes internalized, symbolic annihilation, exclusion, etc. While these conversations are crucial, this framing can at times suggest that representation needs to “happen” in order for non-marginalized folks or exclusive spaces to become educated, inclusive, and diverse. The framing that the student chose instead highlights the positives of representation. Instead, the emphasis is creating art “for us, by us” as a means of finding our own purposes and healing. Based on what we have read from Shange so far, this is something that her work is meant to accomplish. I think of “for colored girls…” and the emphasis it places on the women sharing their individual stories and collective experiences as women of color. For Shange, representation is not supposed to pander to what a white audience (theatrical or otherwise) would expect. Shange’s work’s representation is best summarized by this line:

i found god in myself

& i loved her / i loved her fiercely

It is an opportunity to share and hear one’s individual and collective stories and find healing in those actions.

the tell-tale sign of living

by Elizabeth 1 Comment

For me, Shange’s work is always a bit difficult to read and truly engage with. I find it is often incredibly personal and resonates with me in ways that I am not used to. This week was no different. I was immediately struck by the short blurb after the title.

the roots of your hair / what

mom twisting my hair, 2018

turns back when we sweat, run,

make love, dance, get afraid, get

happy: the tell-tale sign of living

Often, our hair is not talked about in this way. It is something that is straightened, relaxed, brushed down into submission. Even though I would say that I am at a point where I definitely have more appreciation and love for my hair (but maybe not so much about all the time it takes to do it), this was still incredibly impactful. To equate nappy hair with natural acts that are a part of everyone’s lives like sweating and running, to joyous moments like dancing and making love, and to even link it to our feelings like happiness and fear not only naturalizes our happy, but celebrates it.

The power that Shange is naming in this part of Nappy Edges is not inherently sexual, but to me it is an erotic power.  Lorde classifies and defines the erotic throughout her piece to expand its definition from simply being sexual. She says it is a false belief that “only by the suppression of the erotic within our lives and consciousness can women be truly strong” (53). When I read this, my mind immediately went to the aforementioned part of Nappy Edges. As Shange links Black hair to the idea of living, our hair can be understood both as a literal object that is suppressed by white supremacy, and as a metaphor for how lives, feelings, and actions are taught to be suppressed as well. Lorde dismantles the idea that the erotic should be suppressed and instead argues that it is a form of power, which is very in line with the work Shange does in Nappy Edges and other pieces. Just as Shange and Lorde are able to recognize the power of the erotic, Blackness, and nappy edges, I can also begin to recognize the power in the discomfort I have with Shange’s work, which in itself is a tell-tale sign of living and living as Black.

where/when – event post

by Elizabeth 1 Comment

“We have been here since the beginning of time, just saying. We are also immigrants.”

During a slideshow presentation filled with pictures of her family, Cherríe Moraga made this comment during her event at Barnard this past Friday. It was a clear reference to her own Mexican-American heritage being attacked and demonized by the right and in particular, this country’s current president. To Moraga and millions like her, this is home and has been for generations. This made the audience laugh, but for me it prompted a series of questions- where and when am I from?

The first part is easy. I (and like Moraga says, when she says ‘I,’ she means “we”) am from Georgia, and my family has been in the same general areas of Georgia and South Carolina for as long we can remember. I have what has been created for me here- soul-stirring Black southern gospel services, lingering memories of formerly segregated restaurants and movie theaters, “white sounding” names, and a history and culture so rich that it is hidden and obscured by all who do not want me to understand or  remember. This is where I am/we are from.

For Moraga, the beginning was her ancestors moving across the border to Southern California. For me, there was the first slave ship 400 years ago that carried 20 people that may or may not be my great-great-great-great-something. Unlike Moraga, I do not know exactly who the first ones were in my family. So, her statement seems to hold even more true for me/us. We were brought here at the beginning of this country’s colonization, the slave trade, the occupation of indigenous bodies and land, the construction of what America has become today. We have been here since the beginning of time. We are also immigrants.