Zachery

Ntozake The Photographer | Archive Find #2 | Makeen

by Zachery on November 24, 2019 2 Comments

Ntozake Shange… the playwright, the poet, the author… AND the photographer!

In my last archive find post, I reveled about how captivated I was by Ntozake’s collection of photo albums more than anything else I explored in her collection. After many revisits, these photos continue to captivate me–-not solely because they are beautiful but also it truly feels like a privilege to see through Ntozake’s eyes.

This course is titled the Worlds of Ntozake Shange and Digital storytelling. We explore the worlds she creates through writing and performance, but what does it mean to consider the world that she lived in? What about this lived world of Ntozake Shange led her to create these, sometimes fictitious and other times not, worlds that we’ve had the joy of exploring through writing. To me, Ntozake’s photography provides a glimpse into Ntozake’s real world.

Photo at a Protest taken by Ntozake

Photo of an unidentified saxophonist, taken by Ntozake

Many of the photos present in the album feature a smiling Ntozake dolled up alongside other artists, at seemingly lavish galas/events. Some of them feature her alongside her family. The ones that are my favorite are ones that seem like snapshots of specific environments in which Ntozake found herself. Like the two above, these moments are not posed, it is not clear who they feature or where they were taken, but it feels as though we are able to see what Ntozake saw even if just a literal snapshot moment.

Photo of two unidentified people, taken by Ntozake

Photo of an unidentified woman taken by Ntozake

Some photos, like the last, are of people who are presumably friends of Ntozake–– some aware of being photographed or others just existing (like in the first photo here). Many like the baby photo featured here and those in my last archive find, are of Savannah throughout the years. Others are ones of Ntozake’s living room, or dining table–– of art on her walls, or plants in the corner. All of which, to different degrees, expose us to the world that for whatever reason encouraged Ntozake to birth worlds of her own.

A Play That Found Me and Loved Me Fiercely – Makeen

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by Zachery on November 24, 2019 1 Comment

Oh For Colored Girls… how did you know that I needed you so?

Reading and seeing For Colored Girls were such uniquely incredible experiences for me. Reading it for class, I felt as though some parts resonated with me whereas others confused me. Seeing the play, witnessing the movements, hearing the language and other sounds helped to make concrete any confusion. There were moments that made me want to cry, some in which I laughed, others that made me think of specific moments of my life and even some that were foreign to me but through the performance were made clear. I truly could ramble endlessly about how wonderful an experience the play was, but for the sake of this post, I want to focus on my favorite parts of the play: the recurring elements of girlhood.

The play opened with the seven women storming the stage with a wave of song, dance, claps, jumps, and cheers. They played hand games, mimicked double-dutch, and laughed. Admittedly, this was the first moment that I wanted to cry–– not because there was any feeling of sadness but rather because I felt so seen. Almost immediately, before any lines had been delivered, I was forced to reflect. I thought back to when I might have played similar games, I thought back to when I had ever in my life seen a group of women of color simply having fun in any production; I could not think of any. To my pleasant surprise, these seemingly unstructured moments of joy and play were the ones that united each of the play’s poems. Sometimes accompanied by song, other times by stomps and claps, each of these moments evoked in me a desire to join in, a desire to play.

The production closed with a classic four-clap “no music” chant, which could not have been more fitting. The times in my life in which I’ve taken part in such a chant were always at the end of events/closing of spaces that I did not want to leave. This play was certainly one that I wanted to stay in for as long as possible. The women on stage and all of the Black girls/women around me kept up the “no music” chant until the house lights were turned on. The beauty of Black/brown women’s ability to make joy in the midst of pain, to play in the midst of hardship, to create music in the midst of silent was without a doubt the most profound element of For Colored Girls.

Savannah’s Geography – Ntozake Archive Finds

by Zachery on October 30, 2019 0 Comments

Our class spent in the archives was without a doubt the most engaged I’ve ever been in a college class. The excitement and honor I felt to look through Ntozake’s personal collection of books, awards, jewelry, manuscripts, etc. was unmatched. Through it all, however, what stood out most to me were the photo albums.

The first photo album that I went through featured a range of photos of Ntozake with what appeared to be friends/family. There is something so personal about photo albums, the ways in which we select and organize which snapshots to hold dear, that made these albums feel personal even to me despite having no connection to the content.

The second photo album, after two visits to the archives, remains my favorite find. This album, unlike the others, was focused specifically on Ntozake’s daughter Savanah. The album was comprised largely of photos that appear to be taken by Ntozake which was truly a beautiful sight–– to see a young Savannah through Ntozake’s eyes . Ones that displayed Ntozake were alongside Savannah…reading a story book or posing for a casual portrait.

What stood out to me more than the photos, however, was a poem that Ntozake wrote to Savannah.

Savannah

brown sugar cookie

how I miss you….

The words of her letter lay on top of a river of stamped hearts. As always, Ntozake even in her expressions of love bends traditional form and language. “Guard mi corazon…” Inserting Spanish and coupling her writing with imagery, she seems encourage Savannah to navigate the world freely as she does solely in the form of the writing.

Funnily, my immediate response was to send the letter to my mother. On the phone later that same day, we raved about it together. Our phone call ended with my mom saying “We didn’t have classes like these when I was in college, I feel so blessed to experience them through you now.”

Healing Justice and Ancestral Calls – Makeen Blog Post #3

by Zachery on October 4, 2019 1 Comment

Recently, I have been thinking extensively about how the individual engages with the community. This is largely connected to Ntozake’s emphasis on the prioritizing of individual liberation to achieve communal freedom in Nappy Edges. The concept of the individual role within a community also arose in my reading of the goals of the Black and Feminist Art Movements in The Art of Transformation by Lisa Gail Collins. Many of my thoughts have framed this as a dilemma of the individual vs. the collective. The Healing Justice event encouraged me to think otherwise.

The event opened with the calling of the names of our ancestors into the space. Specifically, we were asked to call the names of ancestors that follow us into every room that we occupy. I began thinking of names of my genetic ancestors that I could remember. Then I heard the workshop leaders calling the names of Audre Lorde, of bell hooks, and I began to think more broadly of what ancestry is. I called the names of Ida B. Wells, of Maya Angelou, of the women whose work my mother made sure I was familiar with from an early age. I began to think also what it means for these ancestors to follow us into the spaces we occupy as individuals. For someone to follow you into a space means that you are never alone. And even as we navigate our moments of solitude, our navigation is very much so guided by those who came before us. As a result, I truly did have to deconstruct my former understandings of isolation and solitude.

I had come to understand solitude as a being alone, separate and disconnected. This understanding of solitude has bled into my understanding of the individual. However, with this thought in mind of who follows me into the room, I was forced to think of how even my thoughts and how I carry myself have been formed and nurtured by those who came before me. It also forced me to view the individual and the collective not as being in competition with each other but as two entities that need each other to survive. I thrive as an individual because of the communities that existed before I was even here. My contributions as an individual to the communities that I exist within now are fueled by those that allow me to thrive on my own. Being in the space of the Healing Justice event, hearing the names of ancestors exit the mouths of every individual in the room, while seated in a circle truly helped me visually and audibly recognize that the individual does not have to be and is never alone. If it weren’t for this communal space, I would not have come to this realization for myself.

It was so wonderfully captivating to watch Ebony Noelle Golden and Tiffany Lenoi Jones embody what I hope to one day be capable of. To honor the past while navigating how to move forward. To acknowledge the many ways in which we’ve been positively influenced while shedding the negative influences that have skewed our perceptions of our past and present.

Certain Forms of Nurture – Makeen Week 3

by Zachery on September 19, 2019 1 Comment

Men have been able

to give

power, support

and certain forms of nurture

(as individuals)

When

they

choose

…

but the power

is always

stolen

power.

withheld from

the mass of women

patriarchy.

– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (page 246)

This quote is one that stood out to me most in Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Borne. It was a favorite of mine because it seemed to capture so much in very few words. More specifically, this passage forced me to reconceptualize power and how I understand its creation and its use. Previously, I always understood power as something that allows people to create and enforce certain constructs. Adrienne Rich asserts power as a construct itself–– a fact I had never thought of. She even goes further to say that power is a patriarchal construct that is in many ways sustained by the ways in which it is distributed. Power does not belong to the patriarchy to give, and the patriarchy thrives off of taking power and redistributing it when it deems necessary.

Re-writing the passage as a poem forced me to even further reconceptualize a number of things. Firstly, words that initially struck me as some sort of philosophical theory felt more like natural thought processes in the form of the poem. Before I had written the poem, I wondered if the words would lose their weight, but they did not. If anything, I felt I was able to better understand Rich’s words in this form. They flowed, the words came individually rather than in the form of a wordy phrase as they once existed. In deciding exactly how to restructure the poem, I formatted as I read aloud. Thus, the structure of the poem felt comfortable to speak. Words like us and them that contrasted one another, to me, felt as though they should stand alone. I then had to make smaller decisions like using ellipses in place of a semi colon or even placing the words “as individuals” into parentheses, mostly to find a more natural way to account for the frequent use of commas in the original writing. It became interesting to me that poetry allows for frequent time to reflect within its structure, something that a traditional paragraph form does not allow for. This exerciser finally allowed me to understand Ntozake Shange’s emphasis on the importance of writing existing beyond the page. Whether as movement, speech or song, extending language beyond its written form only strengthens its ability to be understood.

Work That Sees – Makeen Blog Post #1

by Zachery on September 11, 2019 1 Comment

Reading Ntozake Shange’s work for this class was far different from a typical experience of completing homework. I began reading “getting to where I haveta be / the nature of collaboration in recent works” from Lost In Language and Sound. I approached this piece as I would any typical reading assignment: pen in hand, notebook opened, and ready to take traditionally detailed notes. I started noting general patterns, listing quotes and overarching themes as I felt I had been trained to do. However, as I progressed, I realized that this writing was far different than anything I had been trained to read. Despite its being different than anything I had previously encountered, the writing still bought a feeling of comfort over me. I had to abandon what I thought was the proper way to proceed and begin to to analyze and understand in a different manner. The themes that I had been taught to diligently search for began to emerge on their own, they were themes that I felt were my own.

I began writing down individual words that struck me as profound. I did this in each of the poems in Lost In Language and Sound. I did the same as I read through Jessica Hagedorn’s Beauty and Danger and even as I watched “Her Pen is a Machete: The Art of Ntozake Shange” and “A Conversation with Ntozake Shange and Dianne McIntyre.” A number of thoughts jumped out to me but what rested with me most was the concept of community and collectivity that Shange achieved in her creations. One of the people featured in “Her Pen is a Machete” identified that what makes Ntozake’s work distinct is that “anyone could play that part,” specifically in reference to the wide spread re-production of For Colored Girls. For some reason these words are the ones that helped me to identify just what it was that set Shange’s work so beautifully far apart from those that I most frequently encounter in higher education. It was this exact collectivity that made me identify the themes within her works as my own.

Within this theme of collectivity, fall other themes of tradition, ritual and even generational elements of healing that felt oh so familiar. Questions arose for me, specifically in reference to her relationship with her mother grandmother and daughter. What I found most interesting was that in A Daughter’s Georgraphy, Shange spoke of her uncertainty in teaching her baby about the devastations that “this place” ie. this world will bring to her daughter. Yet, Lost In Language and Sound, Shange so wonderfully detailed the exact ways in which her grandmother and mother demonstrated freedom for her. I found this rift to be so odd–– who better to teach coming generations how to be free than Ntozake Shange? Alas, even this demonstration of vulnerability was comforting, to know that these fears arise even within the “best” of us.