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

Dania

Archive Find, A letter addressed to Shange from her mother

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” i sat up one nite walkin a boardin housescreamin/ cryin/ the ghost of another womanwho waz missin what i waz missini wanted to jump up outta my bones& be done wit myselfleave me alone& go on in the windit waz too muchi fell into a numbnesstil the only tree i cd seetook me up in her branchesheld me in the breezemade me dawn dewthat chill at daybreakthe sun wrapped me up swingin rose light everywherethe sky laid over me like a million meni waz cold/ i waz burnin up/ a child & endlessly weavin garments for the moonwit my tearsi found god in myself& i loved her/ i loved her fiercely

All of the ladies repeat to themselves softly the lines ‘i found god in myself & i loved her.’ It soon becomes a song of joy, started by the lady in blue. The ladies sing first to each other, then gradually to the audience. After the song peaks the ladies enter into a closed tight circle.” (62/)

–For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf

 

Since my last archival find, I have been focusing on letters and the intimacy and the truth they hold and  how it relates to  Shange’s life and work I am engaging with. This has been instrumental to my focus on self-portraiture and black girlhood as it allows me to gain insight on the intimacies and the key individuals who have been instrumental in her creative processes and personal growth. I also feel confident in saying that in the works of Shange, they are not separate entities.

In the letter addressed to Shange, her mother states “You have brains, talent, education, money and a pretty face. Please take care of all these gifts. Acting as if they are not there will not make them go away. Please, please think about yourself. Find God, in yourself. Don’t add insult to injury!” This sentence takes me back to Shange’s  For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide Considered When The Rainbow is Enuf  and her encouragement to herself and women beyond to find god in herself is coming from a place that is saturated with love and care. This letter is affirming as it solidifies my argument. Black girls self-portraiture is relational to representations that are resonant in their daily lives. That is not to say that black girls are not able to create people who they want to be outside of the “home” or their place of “belonging”. It is evident that Shange’s mother was instrumental in her processes of healing and of growth. Here we see Shange’s mother is earnest in asking her to find wellness and having gratitude for herself  and her fruitfulness.

 Screenshot 2016-04-19 12.41.58      Screenshot 2016-04-19 12.41.58

 

entitlement: moving beyond the bounds

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In the past few days I have been reading Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo along side Aimee Cox’ Shapeshifters: Blacks Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship and  Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother, and Cox’ highlighted the role of entitlement in solidifying and validating the black girl’s citizenship. Alongside alluding to the importance of entitlement, I have been able to complicate and  rethink the narrative of black girlhood I have been working with. Firstly, Chapter 4, “Mammies, Matriarchs and Other Controlling Images” of Patricia Hill Collins Black Feminist Thought and Hortense Spillers’ “Mama’s baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book” have allowed me to think about ways that the black girl body has been gendered and ungendered, which leaves room for rethink the limitations that are presented in my original thesis. Thus encouraging me to expand the boundaries and furthering my analysis by thinking about the ways in which black trans girls narratives are black girls  narratives, which means  reimagining and rethinking  our existences within our specific contexts which Xuela, the protagonist of Kincaid’s, The Autobiography of My Mother allowed us to do via dreaming and time traveling.

 

Cox’s radical and complex application of entitlement is fundamental to the self-determination and self-definition Shange discusses in Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, except it goes into the legalities, what I would like to think of as the externalized factors which causes the internalized impacts that Shange tries combat by providing modes and methods to heal. As stated in Shapeshifters:

 

“Entitlement typically connotes greed and undeserved  favor when used in conversations that mention Black or poor members of society. This is especially true when talking about low-income young Black women. We need only to refer to the Reagan-era discourse that continues to unjustly haunt welfare recipients who happen  to be young, female, and Black. Entitlement as theorized by Janice-the central figure in this ethnography-and the other young Black women in this book, however, is an empowered statement that disputes the idea that only certain people are worthy of the rights of citizenship and the ability to direct the course of their lives.” (viii)

 

Kincaid:

 

“I believe I heard small rumblings coming from deep within Morne Trois Pitons, I believe I smelled sulfur fumes rising up from the Boiling Lake. And that is how I claimed my birthright, East and West, Above and Below, Water and Land: In a dream. I walked through my inheritance, an island of villages and rivers  and mountains and people who began and ended with murder and theft and not very much love. I claimed it in a dream. Exhausted from the agony of expelling from my body a child I could not love and so did not want, I dreamed of all the things that were mine.” (89)

 

Shange:

 

“Makin cloth, bein a woman & longin

to be of the earth

A rooted blues

some ripe berries

happenin inside

spirits

walkin in a dirt road

toes dusted & free

faces  movin windy

brisk like

dawn round

gingham windows &

opened eyes

reelin to days

ready-made

nature’s image

i’m rejoicin

with a throat deep

shout & slow

like a river

gatherin

Space” (80)

 

“i am  sassafrass/ a weaver’s daughter/from charleston/i’m a woman makin cloth like all good women do/the moon’s daughter made cloth/ the gold array of sun/ the moon’s daughter sat all night/ spinnin/i have inherited fingers that change fleece to tender garments/ i am the maker of warmth & emblems of good spirit/mama didnt ya show me how” (80)

 

The selected speaks to  the right, the entitlement, the various  forms of citizenship the black girls should have access to, the re-magination and the imagination of black girlhood. Entitlement through legalities and through dreams and through being. The bounds of entitlement is mobile as well historical and contemporary.

 

1000 hours of jazz & blues record I discovered thanks to a friend who shared it facebook

The Well Told Story: Carrie Mae Weems

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Carrie Mae Weems’ website is a combination of her artistic mediums-photography and the digital representations of each is also represented difficulty. The website started with an interactive timeline that showcase her personal and professional life-her introduction of photography, her exhibitions, her major life events.

Archival Task, Letter Addressed to Alexis De Veaux

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From the Schomburg archives, I was able to find a letter addressed to Alexis De Veaux from Ellen Jaffe. And in that letter, there were two photos of De Veaux and two other women in front of the home of Harriet Tubman’s home. The letter is very beautiful and there is sense of familiarity as well as formality as to jaffe addresses De Veaux. The heading of the letter has tells DeVeauz the constitution of the letter and a poem at end. The letter speaks of Jaffe’s encounter with the waitress who was a bit discouraged about her writing. As well as a “pantoum” The verses are potent and  are reflective of the process of  self care, self-acceptance and growth.

“Poetographics”- The conversation between poetry and black photography

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“Photography is writing through light”

Central to Shange’s writings and black photography is the ability to capture emotions and life’s mundane activities. Stories of the black individual’s experience in America. The impacts of societal organization on the realities of each lived experience. Kamoinge’s photographs in conversation with Shange’s words grant access to an intimacy that one may not be worthy of or does not have the tools or experiences to understand. The writing as well as the photograph expands, complicates or perhaps simplify narratives by granting permission to the consumer. With this permission explicit contexts may not be available and thus allows the consumer to feel and imagine beyond the scope of the artist’s intentions. The writings and the photographs give language to what is or what may seem inexpressible. As shange mentions, photographs hold memories beyond what is captured in “a bit of the Lord will take you thru”:

If I Can Cook, You Know God Can: Food, Histories and Memory

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In If I Can Cook, You Know God Can, Ntozake Shange attaches specific dishes with specific experiences and histories. In doing so, Shange gives depth about a particular recipe and thus connecting how it shapes a people’s existence. Integrating the histories of foods and its impact is essential as the stories and movement of people across the diaspora is shared and better understood. Shange expresses a fluidity of exchange of foods and methods of preparing said foods, from Cuba to Venezuela to Guadeloupe, which is indicative of familiarity and fundamental relations. The fundamental similarities in the preparation of foods is translated to the colloquialisms that are used to describe foods and actions as Grosvenor mentions in the foreword:

Shange’s Visit- Language, Creolization, Memory: The importance of Combative breathing.

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“You can’t depend on the sunshine for symmetry”

“If I could I go through a day and not have an evil thought or hurt anybody, I have a good day”

“A part of being a feminist is to discover how to dress like a woman”

(Shange)

Shange’s visit was one that was both an “out of body” experience and one that felt very real and inescapable because her ability to capture one’s attention in person, just as she does in her work. It was a very compact and I am still in awe of her humbleness and her willingness to be a vessel both in her works and her being.

 

You cd try direct

When i’m vulnerable & survivin

I get each moment back/ i want to know

what we make

in the world/survivin us/makes us

non-fiction/unless yr holdin back

then you are fiction & i am a plot

so my silence is a kind of gratitude how often am i understood if i open my mouth

we give each other empty paper bags & ticket stubs

we’ve been someplaces or are going

this not camp

 

this is a wide open hand/ unsettled unclaimed

in the hinderlands of ordinary/we cd homestead it we cd save it till the next time

we cd burrow our feet in soil & gather up sky wine& music

 

you know whatta breeze is at twilight in autumn

the horizon lays out in violet & sepia

jets of orange wisk thru our hands

that’s why my neck gets so hot when you touch me

the last heavy breaths of the day belong to us

non-fiction/

 

-Fiction/Non-Fiction (Okra’s intellect addresses Green’s mind)

 

 

 

Poetry is mobile. Okra and Greens showed that poetry is transferrable spatially and temporally. Through its transferability it creates room and the necessity for archival spaces. Archival spaces illuminate the importance of memory and storytelling. As it is a recollection of experiences that create an arsenal of one’s life. The dynamism of storytelling and archiving encourages conversations across disciplines.

Archival spaces serve as sites for remembrance, accountability, documentation of empires, preservation of knowledge and the control of knowledge within the context of imperialism. Poetry’s ability to create memory and record the sentimental emotion allows the a space for sentimental archiving. Within the context of Shange’s work and her decision to donate her work to Barnard’s archive speaks to the importance of referential work for black women and students at predominantly white institutions. Shange’s archival materials despite it’s magnitude and multiple genres felt personal due the intimacy and the honesty that lives in boxes. It removes the formality and rigidity from the research process and personalizes the experiences. Though the formality and rigidity is removed the process of archiving Shange’s work, these is a reverence in the way that I, along with my peers handled her possessions which is attributed to the gravity and the depth of writing. The organization of Shange’s archival materials reflects her concept of “carnal intellectuality” as it incorporates both spatial and the temporal component, which extends across borders. Her archives are self-defined. Shange’s archival material are interactive and multidisciplinary. For example, combining both her work, works that have been inspirational as well as personal items- the nipple duster.

 

Post our class with Shange, I had a conversation with a friend and the topic of patience surfaced and she repeated a cultural proverb, which states “the fruit of patience is sweet” which is directly related Shange’s encouragement to be patient with ourselves as young writers, artists and intellectuals. Patience is essential to practicing combative breathing, which was reflective in the breathing exercise with Shange.

Shange states, “you have to ready your body for language”. Language is not static. It is translatable perhaps not verbatim but by integrating tools such as histories, memories and movements, Shange makes the claim that people across the African diaspora can communicate and relate by using the colonizers’ languages or a mixture of the colonizers’ languages which Shange does in her work. Which puts the importance of creolization on the forefront. Shange’s words forces us to interact with words with movement. In addition to that Shange’s work both in content and style, queers the representation of language by coining terms and combining languages of theAfrican Diaspora which allots an openness and the selflessness that Shange presents in her work and its is reflected in her archives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sQjh261rU8- To zion lauryn Hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qWuKSGii8o-sing- Sing to the moon Laura Mvula

 

The Evolution of Archiving

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Curating: What legitimizes it?

 

During our visit with Ntozake Shange, I asked her if there was a period in her career as writer, where she felt as though she could not write, completely frozen, and if so, how did she overcome this? Shange continuously spoke and speaks about the importance of integrating movement and language as she states, “You have to ready your body for language” as language moves and has the capability of moving. Language and movement are not separate entities. In her response, Shange mentions the importance of sporadic writing, even if it begins with writing a grocery list, as it is possible to and usually develops into something else. Language works as a tool for personal and communal reflection. Through writing, language-though there is no certainty she takes this approach to all her work because she shared her disciplined writing schedules- there is intentionality behind Shange’s writing. Shange’s writing documents and vocalizes some of the experiences of black womanhood and black girlhood.

Archiving materials indicate that a decision about the worth and the necessity of its preservation-whether this decision is made by the creator of the work- has been made, which validates its importance. From the discussion with Shannon on what is considered an archive and the formality of archives, there is confrontation as well as flexibility on the definition and the methods of curating. In “An Open Letter to Everyone Using the Word Curate Incorrectly” Mel Buchanan expresses a strong opposition to the casual or liberal usage of the word “curate” to describe their modes and practices of documenting information without formal training. As Buchanan states “ Curating, by its very definition, is done carefully. Care is implied. MAKING A LIST IS NOT CURATING. Nor is it is filling your bookshelves with color-coded paperbacks and animal bones and jars of feathers you found at a thrift store”, which implies that Buchanan believes the formality of its training validates and legitimizes a “curator”. However, I would like to challenge the sentiment that there is one structured way of creating histories and recording memories. Changes in methods of communication impact the creation and production of information. The implementation of intergenerational techniques as the digital era evolves. Redefining and reimagining traditional and hegemonic modes of cultivating, sharing knowledge and archival practices enables the individual to be in control of their content, which encourages Shange’s notions of self-determination.

Shange’s Sentimental Fiction(s), Healing: The Public vs The Private

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Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo can be described as a Sentimental Fiction, a word that was used by Rafael Vicente whilst in conversation about his work  “White Love: Census and Melodrama in the U.S. Colonizationof the Philippines” and “Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912,” which Vicente framed as fictional work that is very political in that it intentionally uses its plot, its characters, its location to convey and represent structures of power within specific context. And thus does critically and analytically engages the everyday life within structures that seem invisible. For example, Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo focuses on the politics of black girlhood and black woman, the politics of class and the manners in which it affects black girlhood and black womanhood. The sentimental fiction higlights that personal is political. It does so by using the work of literature to tell historical and contemporary stories. It foreshadows the difficulty in compartmentalizing or differentiating the difference between the real and the imaginative. And Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo does that. As Indigo transitions or realizes her “womanhood”, “Indigo stood by the door watching this bloodletting. Silent. Pretty Man surveyed the situation. Put the evilest eye he could gather up on Indigo, who startled under the power of his gaze. That was all it took. The men slowly came back to themselves. Looked Puzzled” (38), there is an interruption, an unwanted interruption that, that enables and forces Indigo to see her womanhood in the way that her mother describe. Manhood, steps in and gawk at blackgirlhood, and the black girl is forced to see her womanhood, in the midst of her girlhood, an interpellation.

In addition to speaking to the interpellation of black girlhood to womanhood, Shange touches on the politics of seeking healing and resolution within the public versus private In Indigo’s personal spell “To rid oneself of the scent of evil”, the spell is very individualize, which is a very radical and non-binary way of think of healing. With the personal, the phrase that states “Violence or purposeful revenge should not be considered in most cases. Only during wars of national liberation, to restore the honor of the race, or to redress calamitous personal & familial trauma, may we consider brute force/annihilation”, following the spell makes a clear distinction about how-whether violence should be used, in the defense of the race publicly- matter of the community should be addressed. Which leads me to question to efficacy of having a divide between the public and the private when black girlhood and womanhood is jeopardized?

 

Songs I was listening as read this week’s reading:

Nina Simone- My Father

Nina Simone- I shall be released

Nina Simone- Blackbird (cover)

 

 

Theatre, Healing, Self-Realization, Self-Actualization, Sensuality as Existence and Collectivity

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For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf   centralizes  the essence, process and the work of healing both individually and collectivity. Shange affirms the acknowledgement of sensuality, the embodiment and the reclamation of sensuality. Sensuality that enables women of color to be expressive, to heal and to exist without limitation(s). In Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” similar sentiments are expressed as well as the Spring 2014 production of an All Self-Identified Women of Color cast Vagina Monologues. These work of arts, though through different mediums  speak about self-realization and self-actualization through performance art and healing through recognition of harmful acts that demands and encourages women of color self-deprecation. Recognition  and expression of the sensual in service of oneself and other women who are engaged  in collectivity work as lorde mentions”For women,  this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives” (53). Lorde acknowledges the detriments of suppressing the erotic, which I interpret as being the movement and the acknowledgement of one’s (women’s) ability and capability to love and care for themselves unconditionally and wholly.