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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Reading Zake: Vamo Hablar Ingles

by Ortiz 0 Comments

 

As I read for coloured girls by Shange, I was saddened by the idea that I hadn’t found her before. Before, when my curling hair and español didn’t fit in my mouth, didn’t fit in my writing, in my thoughts. When my own identity alienated me from my conceived self, a self that was white-passing (at least in South Jamaica, where white was just skin), and desired a white family and white traditions. As I read Shange, 21 and no longer desiring a white

identity, but desperately clinging to the aspects of my identity that are deeply Latina and give me culture, sabor at Barnard, I am deeply moved by her words. I annotated her work, as pictured, expressing the way my heart stopped when her stanzas did, or when it left me full of something unrecognizable – was it love for myself, or the people I identify with? Shange’s writing is not just feminist writing, it is not just transnational and globalized, it is not just about culture and music and movement, it is about humanity as its core. It is about empathy and love and passion, pain, and healing and for these reasons, for the shared experiences Shange expresses in for coloured girls¸ I am able to tie myself to a story that is not necessarily, explicitly my own.

we deal wit emotion too much

so why don’t we go on ahead & be white then/

& make everythin dry & abstract wit no rhythm & no

reelin for sheer sensual pleasure/ yes let’s go on & be white. (58-59)

— and I wanted to be white, for so long, because, as Shange expresses, maybe being white means not having to address the idea of the woman of color that is too sensitive, too concerned about herself. Maybe this was a way to remove myself from myself? But as Shange states, “bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma / i havent conquered yet” (59). Haven’t conquered because I refuse to view myself as separate, fragmented pieces, at least not anymore.

Now, as I read other literary works, I search for myself. I don’t search for a regurgitated image of what others think I am, because I am too complicated, too sanctified, too magic, too music (60-61) to be one thing.

El español de Shange, the reference to the music of my childhood, merengue, immediately reminded me of Fefita’s performance of Vamo Hablar Ingles; watching as a woman dominate a stage, surrounded by music and movement and culture / my culture adopted a new meaning. A song that only in asserting to “hablar ingles” is adopting the same transnational, global connections that Shange evokes, and in a sense, it’s all tied together.

 

 

Post #1 — One Bloodstream, Two Inheritances

by Eliana 1 Comment

“I am talking here about a kind of strength which can only be one woman’s gift to another, 

the bloodstream of our inheritance. 

Until a strong line 

of love, 

confirmation, 

and example 

stretches from mother to daughter, 

from woman to woman across the generations, 

women will still be wandering in the wilderness.” (246)

 

My arrangement of the lines forces the reader to meditate on the importance of intergenerational love, confirmation, and example paved by a unified line of women throughout time. The breath also shifts the reader’s attention to the power of this intergenerational mothering line being a strong one — which is what spoke to me about the passage as a whole. 

 

In my case, I’ve received the gift Rich describes here twofold. Of Woman Born helped me understand why, throughout most of my life, I’ve considered having two moms to be a superpower. The inherited gift of strength, passed down to me from both of my parents, has allowed me to become my own hero. My mothers, both born in the 1950’s, gifted me this strength after decades of struggling with the “institutionalized heterosexuality” (218) identified by Rich, coping with the reality of starting a unified life as religious queer women. My mothers both follow the paths of the “unmothered” (243) as described by Rich, having lived most of their lives without their own mothers. This path is one of pain turned fortitude, throughout their motherless process of coming out and building their own family, after the birth of my sibling in 1994. Thus, they carry with them both hardship and immense courage which stretches proudly from mother(s) to daughter. My line of generational inheritance may not be as refined as Rich describes, but it’s just as unified and just as strong. This line comes from both of my mothers, and it’s for me to pass on to my daughters and their daughters. 

 

My mothers treat their title as “mother,” fittingly, like most queens treat their crowns. If ever I refer to one of my parents by their name instead of “mom” or “mommy,” I know I’ll be met with the same do you know how hard I worked to become your mother? that I know all too well, and have grown to love. The labor being described here is not that of pregnancy, suggested by Rich, but the labor of facing intolerance. This is a way in which Rich and I divert. In my poetic rewrite of the quote, the breath and spacing I chose pair bloodstream and inheritance, placing them in an unexpected juxtaposition; my inheritance has little to do with my bloodstream but it’s still strong. I disagree with the notion that “probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies.” (225) Much of what runs through my inherited bloodstream is unknown; anonymous donor #138 may have given me wide brown eyes, but it was my mothers who taught me to see. They taught me to love through the greatest process of confirmation and example – greater than I could have imagined.

Taylor Post 1: Epistemological Violence & “Going Home”

by Thompson 1 Comment
Excerpt From Wretched Of The Earth p. 210
Colonialism is
         (not)
     satisfied
                   merely
 with holding people in its
 grip and emptying the
native brain of all form and content.
By a kind of perverted
logic,
it turns
to the past
of the oppressed people, and
dis           torts,
   d i s
      f i g u r e
   s,
and destroys it.
This work of devaluing pre-colonial history takes on a dialectical significance today.
Why I formatted the way that I did:
I tried to organize the poem on the page to reflect the way my body read the words. The way I annotated the page, I thought first that the following paragraph was to be about ‘What Colonialism Is’. It was, instead, a paragraph on what colonialism is (not). It opened up questions in me around what would ’satisfy colonialism’ and by extension, what would satisfy larger iterations of capitalist settler colonial logics in the country we live in here. I couldn’t stop thinking about how voracious a system this is, how gluttonous and ridiculous and alienating it becomes. How often it distorts the ways I am able to understand the world and the way I want to move through it.
Epistemological Violence & “Going Home”: 
    The passage I chose is talking—to me— about the many forms of epistemological violence constituted through colonial logics. Epistemological violence, to me, constitutes forms of violence which attack, undermine, and erase the ways people understand the world and peoples ways of knowing. When our ways of understanding and translating the world are distorted, it makes it harder to think reflexively, to (as Cherrié Moraga reminded us last week in her BCRW interview) “go home” to one’s origin stories and work out what must be worked out. Perhaps that is the point of this specific system of oppression.
    Thinking critically about forms of epistemological violence, my mind was certainly drawn to the prompt quote of this assignment. Ntozake Shange writes in Language and Sound of the ways in which she often wants to attack and deform that language which attempts to attack her—that language being English. It is a language which “perpetuates the notions that cause pain to every black child as he/she learns to speak of the world & the “self” (19). In many ways, the english language over and over again through series of, what Foucault might call, ‘small punishments’, teaches us that the ways we want to express the world has limits that must be respected if we ourselves want to be respected. For example, in many ways, the manner in which the english language has historically been implicated in the lives of my ancestors has been as a tool to devalue their stories. And I feel that pull, that friction. I know that the very language I use to articulate and read maps of liberation in essays, and novels, and poems, has also constituted great violence upon my ghosts.
What I learned to articulate: 
    In this place, if things cannot be articulated in this language, they are invalidated and distorted. When I mean that I don’t have words but I have a movement or a sound in my chest that can tell you everything, it is with the hope that you (can read beyond this place)/ understand. Audre Lorde tells us “that poetry is not a luxury” and I have to constantly remind myself that that poetry can exist outside of this colonizer tongue. That poetry is bigger than my tongue, mouth and body—that it prompts an overflowing in me.

“A Dying Colonialism” and its ties to “Porque tu no m’entrende”- Chelsea Blogpost #1

by Chelsea A. 1 Comment

Every rejected veil disclosed to the eyes of colonialists horizons

until then forbidden

piece by piece- the flesh of Algeria laid bare

Every veil that fell,

every body that became liberated from the traditional embrace of the haïk–

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.

Algerian society– with every abandoned veil,

seemed to express its willingness

and attend to the master’s school,

and to decide to change its habits-

under the occupier’s direction and patronage.

-Algeria Unveiled, “A Dying Colonialism” by Frantz Fanon (42-43)

Reading this passage by Frantz Fanon captured my attention in the way that Fanon details the impact of colonialism on the women in Algeria under France’s rule. The pressures that many Algerian women were faced with between what was their normal ways of dressing and what the native culture accepted, versus what the infiltration of European colonialism deemed restrictive and having tp adapt to the new culture. This passage has added onto my already existing knowledge of what life was like for many African nations under the rule of European powers. And these restrictions expanded beyond the continent as well. Even during the times of slavery and Jim Crow, black women were (and still are) subjected to the European standard of beauty. The way that white women looked and dressed was to be envied and copied.

It’s interesting to see that the pressures of fitting into the societies that white people have crafted, is a dilemma that women of color have been facing for over 400 years now. What was normal for women prior to European contact is now seen as uncultured and barbaric. When white people come into a society and try to change what was already there, it seems that what they bring to a country and its culture is the “right way” to do things. When the European standard of beauty is forced upon women of color, we tend to doubt ourselves and eventually give into the standards. In the case of the Algerian women, the decision to take off the haïk and wear less clothing is like accepting defeat and allowing the colonizer to dictate how women should be allowed to dress. Anything that is traditional is barbaric and “limits” the rights of women.

As Shange says in “Porque tu no m’entrende?”, we must “break through the grids of colonial contrivance and discover who has truly been round and about us, who is round and about us”. This is how I relate both of these examples to my own life. As a curvy black woman with type 4 natural hair living in America, I still face these colonial restraints that stemmed from my great great grandmothers all the way down to me. If one thing has not changed, it’s the fact that we all dealt with the pressures of the European standard of beauty. It causes you to doubt yourself. How will people think of me when my hair is in its natural state? Am I less desirable because I am not on the thinner side of the weight spectrum? Am I not worthy enough because my skin is darker? Should I become something that I am not? These are the questions that I am faced with as I walk through this world. One thing for certain that I have learned from both texts is that the European standard of beauty has always been there, but it is now my job to break the grids of colonial contrivance and love me for who I am.

My Take “On National Culture”- Samaha Blogpost One

by Hossain 1 Comment

“On National Culture” 

“The native intellectual nevertheless sooner or later will realize that

you do not

Shaheed Minar in Bangladesh erected in honor of the Language Movement

show proof of your nation from its culture, 

but that you substantiate its existence

in the fight, which the people wage,

against the forces, of occupation.

No colonial system draws its justification from the fact that the territories are

culturally non-existent.

You will never make colonialism blush

for shame, by spreading out little-known cultural treasures, under its eyes.

 

what he [the native intellectual] ultimately intends to embrace are

in fact, the castoffs of thought,

Women resisting during the Bengali Liberation War in 1971

its shells, 

and corpses, a knowledge

which has been stabilized once and for

all.

 

he must go

on until he has found the seething pot–

of which the learning of,

the future will emerge” 

(Fanon, 223 and 225).

For this week’s blog post, I chose Frantz Fanon’s piece, “On National Culture.” It stood out to me because it seemed to have a lot in tandem with what Shange was writing about in “my pen is a machete.” Throughout her piece, she was writing to dismantle the oppressive imposition of the English language unto Black people and those oppressed within the United States, which was evident in the way she chose to spell her words and use breaks that felt familiar to her. Fanon had similar feelings as he continually expressed his discontent with colonial efforts to erase national identities. He suggests that the cultural identity of a nation emerges after its liberation. From my understanding, he poses liberation as distancing one’s  identity from European hegemonic entanglement. He also suggests that searching for an identity solely connected with one’s ancestry and past, may leave one feeling unfulfilled in the present. Thus, he suggests that breaking free from these binary thoughts may foster a new national and cultural identity.

The excerpt I chose to rearrange into a poem delineates these three phases that he speaks in a beautiful way, while depicting the struggle and the extent needed to combat the oppression of not just the English language and art, but European impositions upon colonized people. I inserted a picture of Bangladeshi women carrying guns and protesting during the Bengali Liberation War in 1971. This example resonates with me and this post because it exemplifies radical protest and revolution against the colonial Pakistani rule during that time. I think that it also connects back to Shange’s readings for this week because the liberation war grew out of the Bengali language movement, during which, Bengalis fought for their mother tongue, under Pakistani rule. Thus, all of these moments in history coincide in the way that they struggle and radicalize around an identity and against an oppressive, often, colonial force. This is meaningful to me because as someone non-white born in America and having never visited my mother country, I sometimes debate the politics of  my belonging in the U.S. I think Shange’s rearrangement and ownership of the English language to serve her work is radical and inspiring, and it is a direction towards continuing decolonial projects. Her pen is her machete, and I await to find my own.

an impossible knot

by Ortiz 1 Comment

My mother, pregnant with me in El Salto, a waterfall in Azua, Dominican Republic.

My mother, pregnant with me.

To be a daughter is to be inextricably intertwined with one’s mother, as explained by Adrienne Rich in “Of Woman Born,”. As I read through Rich’s logic of the all too complicated phenomenon that is the mother-daughter relationship, I came to understand my own relationship with my mother. Of course, there is only so much that can be taken from a text written by a woman whose relationship with her mother is not complicated by race or class. But nevertheless, I found myself thinking of the adolescent rage that inhabited my body as I thought of my mother. My mother is a woman born in the Dominican Republic, and having been dispossessed of her own mother as a child, she drew all of her energy into her relationship with her own children. My mother experienced the essential female tragedy, as described by Rich (237) and as a result, she nurtured us and provided a fierce, tender form of love that allowed us, allowed me to unashamedly desire this complete return to the mother. And yet, I experienced a similar distancing from the being that I am unavoidably tied to. 

I used to blame my mother for forcing me to stand in front of a sink and do dishes. She was unaware that the alienation from my brothers and what was expected of me made me believe I was somehow inferior, as if it to say that I was born with the purpose to serve. I hated her as she stood idly while I suffered the consequences of a rigid, patriarchal society that began in the confines of my home. And while I had not been introduced to the concept of feminism until my adolescence, I recognized the pillars of inequality, and saw her as the vessel of it. Yet, I did not understand the plight of motherhood. I did not understand the ways that my mother, too, had fallen victim to a system that rendered her a vehicle for oppression to her own daughter. I look at these images of my mother, pregnant with me, and understand Adrienne Rich as she describes the physical ties that envelop the mother and daughter. I rejected my own desire to return to my mother, but I imagine myself, enveloped in a warm, amniotic fluid that only meant to nourish me. I imagine myself, a mother to a daughter, whose own relationship to her mother is violently disrupted by her death. To make sense of my own plights, I needed to understand my mother’s, and the way she was limited, not only by the harsh expectations of a “male-controlled world,” but her inability to return to her own mother, aside from vignettes stored in her memory. I am still learning from her, of her, about her, and in doing so, I further tie myself to her. Yet, I don’t mind this impossible knot we’re creating.  

 

A Mother’s Dream – Charista Blogpost #1

by Charista 1 Comment

As I was reading through Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Reflections on Motherhood as Experience and Institution, these lines struck me.  I rearranged the lines so the reader can take pauses after each line and so the words look more alive, almost like they’re floating in the air. It reminded me of my own personal experiences with my mother and how she raised me. I am the eldest of three daughters born to an immigrant mother, who arrived here from the opposite side of the world with my grandparents and her two sisters to seek the American dream.

Working double and triple jobs in menial labor despite college degrees in their native land, my grandparents instilled the virtues of education to their children –all three ultimately earning doctorate degrees, including my mother. The adults in my life inspire me. I model my courage, ambition, and kindness after them. My mother is the bravest, strongest, and most hardworking woman I know. She raised my sisters and I with values that prioritize family and education to ensure our lives would be different than her childhood growing up.

She always puts her children first, even still to this day. My mother constantly tells us to live freely and follow our dreams so we can live the lives we want, the lives she always dreamt we’d have. My mother means everything to me. I’d be lost without her and all of her guidance and love. I often reflect on my life and how grateful I am to have such a strong, independent woman as my mother who inspires me to pursue my passions with the mindset that anything is possible.

 

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.

Work That Sees – Makeen Blog Post #1

by Zachery 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.

Ntozake, Hagedorn, and Histories

by Tirzah Anderson 0 Comments

Shange and Hagedorn’s writings are similar, not just in style and in their use of language to
induce an experience for the reader, but in their criticisms of colonization and exertion of power,
which they highlight through the use of allusions to history. As a Filipina, Jessica Hagedorn, focuses
on the Spanish colonization of the Philippines. Similarly, Ntozake Shange, focuses on the ways in
which historical actions including slavery and colonization have impacted various Black
communities, globally. Through their allusions to history, the reader is able to gain an understanding
of the ways in which each work is indicative of actual physical experiences, but also the ways in
which the author expands on those experiences and delves into the impacts of those experiences on
individuals and their descendants, specifically the cultural impacts of those historical events.

In New World Core, Shange specifically alludes to the slave trade of the “new world” and
how that influenced and created new communities and cultures. She focuses on the slave ship and
physical journey of the slave, when she says, “we boarded ships/… on the atlantic side of nicaragua
costa rica”. However, she continues this exploration by noting the ways in which this slave trade
continues to impact the world. In her words, “locked in depths of seas our spirits”, she is noting the
loss of physical life along the slave trade, but also the loss of a connection to much of the culture
and history that was associated with various communities in Africa. Further, this can allude to a
common practice among slave traders when they practiced appendage removal. This often
symbolized a loss of spirit for African slaves who practiced religions native to many communities
throughout West Africa, in which they believed that body parts housed the soul. This was a specific
exertion of power that dehumanized African slaves and contributed to the creation of slave societies
within the so called “new world”. This historical allusion not only highlights historical realities, but
also their implications as it criticizes the transatlantic slave trade as a means of erasure of culture for
millions of people.

Hagedorn explores the colonization of the Philippines in Souvenirs, specifically by the
Spanish, in her examination by pointing out physical manifestations of their colonialism, but then
nods to the deeper association of those actions with the current culture within the Philippines and
Filipino communities. For instance, she mentions the “spanish missionary/who raped [her] great-
grandmother”, but then she complicates this story by adding, “i asked him if he was god”. Throughout the poem, she specifically highlights how Christianity, specifically Catholicism was used as a tool in Spanish colonization. In this specific point, however, she is seemingly mocking the Spanish religion and the Spanish who were going against their own religious teaching. She highlights the hypocrisy and twisted duality of a missionary raping her great-grandmother by equating his actions and his exertion of power over her grandmother to god. This not only showcases the story of her grandmother but echoes the larger power exertion associated with Spanish colonialism. This also
shows the ways in which Christianity and aspects of Spanish culture infiltrated generations of
Filipinos, which she exemplifies in the use of words like “sanctity n piety” and “the virgin mary”
throughout the poem, when she is focusing on modern Filipino people. This word choice and the
repetition of these words is purposeful and is meant to show the past and current implications of
Spanish colonization in the Philippines, and how it has shifted Filipino culture.