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

Monthly Archives

15 Articles

Engaging Black Masculinity

by Nadia 0 Comments

the suspect is black & in his early 20’s is a poem that causes readers to engage with black masculinity in America by invoking Bigger Thomas, a 20 year old man who accidentally kills a white woman in Richard Wright’s Native Son.

Before engaging Native Son, Shange provides context (in brackets) of real life examples of criminalized black men spoken about in the news in 1974 at the time she was writing the poem. She refers to the criminal activities of a left-wing revolutionary group, the Symbionese Liberation Army (S.L.A.). The S.L.A. kidnapped a white woman named Patricia Hearst and robbed a bank. In addition Shange mentions, “Zebra” killings which were 16 racially motivated murders and 8 attempts by a group of Black Muslim men. In providing this information in the brackets, Shange sets up a clear parallel to the criminalization of Bigger Thomas in Native Son, while simultaneously showing that the content in the brackets could be replaced with content about the criminalization of black men at any point in history. A very poignant example would be the way black men are criminalized in Public Safety security alerts at Barnard about suspects who are most often black and in their early 20s or younger.

Outside of the brackets, Shange uses Bigger Thomas in the rest of her poem as a representative for all black men. Notably, black women are suspected to be implicated by mere association to black men, as seen with Bessie Smith and the mention of “(women included)” in brackets within the brackets in the first stanza.  Shange reveals her complex relationship with black men in this poem by revealing how she went from hating Bigger to sympathizing with him. She writes, “i always hated bigger thomas… till i remembered who mary dalton waz.” Mary Dalton is a stand in for white supremacy which leads black men to commit crimes as their only means of survival. It is noteworthy that there are few slashes in the poem, rather there are gaping white spaces where Mary Dalton is implicated causing us to ponder and dwell on the whiteness of the page between words.

Though Shange reflects on black masculinity and how it has been affected by white supremacy, Shange shows her concern for black women’s agency and well-being through her identification with Bessie. She makes it plain that “mary dalton cost bessie.” She acknowledges that “bigger treated bessie soooo bad.” But at the same time, she invites black women into having a more complex understanding of black masculinity. Shange realizes that her simplistic understanding of Bigger as either “a man” or “a thug,” excludes the role of white supremacy in the expression of their masculinity.  By referring to Mary Dalton as the reason behind Bigger’s crimes, she also shows how black men’s struggles in racist society may cause them to be abusive in romantic relationships, as Bigger was with Bessie.

Ultimately, Shange deals with the experience of black people in America through this poem. Mary Dalton, “her drunken ashes / her wanton charred / bones sent thousands of / bullets looking for a blk boy / any one nigger wd do.” Black people are not seen as individuals, but one suspect mass: “the suspect is our sons / again prey to whims & caprices of / grande dame white ladies.” And Mary Dalton is resurrected every time a black person is criminalized. (slashed in quotes were added by me)

 

Bigger Thomas holding lifeless Mary Dalton: Bigger’s burden to carry. 

Mary Dalton,

“you are ashes

you are dry bones

you are the bringin of death to our sons

the suspect is black & always in his early 20’s”

Nappy Edges and the personal/political

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

. . . the political values inherent in the Black Power concept are now finding concrete expression in the aesthetics of Afro-American dramatist, poets, choreographers, musicians, and novelists. A main tenet of Black Power is the necessity for black people to define the world in their own terms. The black artist has made the same point in the context of aesthetics. –Larry Neal, “The Black Arts Movement“

Underlying their calls for self-examination, reflection, and scrutiny was the belief that increased knowledge of the self and the collective in society, past and present, would lead to a strong communal consciousness which, in turn, would lead to an empowered and unified activist community ready to transform —  Lisa Gail Collins, ““The Art of Transformation: Parallels in the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movements”

 

cuz we don’t ask a poet to speak personally / we want a 

poet to talk like an arena/ or like a fire station/ to be everywhere/

all at once/ even if we never been there

Nappy Edges, Shange’s first collection of poetry, is also her first extended published meditation on what it means to be a black woman/feminist poet in America.  It demands a space for the “personal” in black poetry, not just for the expression of the “personal in the sense of the subjective, the emotional, the sexual, but also personal in the sense of “the individuality of the word,” (9); that is, the unique expressiveness and “voice”/sound of the writer.  We will want to think about the this question of uniqueness in two (or more) contexts: (1) the importance of collaboration in Shange’s work and (2) the importance of connection to community in Black Arts ideology.

when i take my voice into a poem or a story / i am trying desperately to give you that.

In “The Black Arts Movement,” Larry Neal, a chief BAM theorist, avers that “the black artist’s primary duty is to speak to the spiritual and cultural needs of Black people,” a sentiment of responsibility and connectedness that Collins sees in both the Black Arts Movement and Feminist Art Movement. Does this ideological drive preclude poetry like Shange’s that is intimate and “promiscuous” in its influences? Does the attention to the “folk” mean that middle class writers like Shange need to ventriloquize another’s voice rather than refining their own? (heads up: this issue of class will come up again in Michelle Wallace and Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo).

What are your thoughts about the extended analogy between music and poetry in “takin’ a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative,” particularly the discussions of Amiri Baraka and Ishmael Reed(3ff)? What are we to make of the volume’s mix of genres–parables, self-interviews, lyric, and literary criticism? How effective is the mix of poems spoken seemingly in Shange’s voice and poems that try to develop specific characters and stories?

Finally, how do we continue to integrate music into our discussions of movement and dance? In an early review of Nappy Edges, Poet Michael Harper faulted the discussion of music in this collection, arguing “her analogy between jazz musicians and poets is weakened by their lack of a shared vocabulary and the different technical demands of their art” (NYTimes 10/21/79).  Might we come to a different conclusion if we think about music, movement and language simultaneously? Is Shange developing the shared vocabulary as she writes about the collection? (Or is that a question better asked of her collaboration with with David Murray?)

A note on music

“My ‘yes’ will never be Tina’s ‘yes’. and that’s what I want to discuss with you this evening” (2)

So this week I learned that Tina Turner has a lot of “yesses” or “yeahs.” When I read that line,  I immediately thought of her deep,  unrestrained “yeah, yeah, yeah,” in “River Deep, Mountain High” (her first solo hit while married to Ike Turner)

 

But then I found this mike drop “yea” at the end of  this classic “Fool in Love” clip. Unfortunately the “for research only” stamp is covering up some of Tina’s hip action:

Sadly, when I watch vintage clips of Tina, I think of Ike Turner’s violence, which then led me back to “with no immediate cause”

the

victims have not all been

identified/

 

NOTE for class: Gabrielle Davenport and I are still working out the music issues, but here’s a mix I did for “lotsa body and cultural heritage”

 

They Reminisce Over You: Remembering to Heal & Remembering to Prompt Action

by Amanda 1 Comment

“It is not enough to reunite with the people in a past where they no longer exist. We must rather reunite with them in their recent counter move which will suddenly call everything into question; we must focus on that zone of hidden fluctuation where the people can be found. For let there be no mistake, it is here that their souls are crystallized and their perception and respiration transfigured… When the colonized intellectual writing for his people uses the past he must do so with the intention of opening up the future, of spurring them into action and fostering hope.”

Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (163- 167).

In On National Culture, Fanon highlights the tendency of the “colonized intellectual” to look to the past “in order to escape the supremacy of white culture,” (155). In highlighting this truth, looking to the past becomes understood as a wanting practice. Fanon suggests a larger amount of energies be spent using the past as an aide in centering the present moment where the people become woke, where they define themselves, where their agency molds the future.

Reading this quote makes me think heavily about Harlem and healing. Why I think of Harlem, always, within landscapes of time— Harlem in the future, Harlem as I know it today, and, especially, Harlem in the past—is a reflection of one of the ways I’ve chosen to “escape the supremacy of white culture,” or, rather, one of the ways I’ve chosen to heal. For this reason, reshaping Fanon’s words to communicate the necessity of remembering the past, finding solace in history was most pressing. However, I wanted to do this in a way that recognized the value of centralizing the current experiences of the people and propelling them into action, as Fanon encourages, while placing emphasis on the relationship between remembering to heal and remembering to incite action.

Spaces are where I hear changes in the voice of the speaker; (double) slashes highlight words and connecting phrases; dashes that engulf words are meant to create a level of erasure.

 

it is –not- enuf/

to -re-unite with the people/

in a past/ where they no longer exist

we/       must -rather re-unite with them

in their recent counter move/

which will suddenly call everything into question/

we must focus on that zone/        of        hidden   fluctuation//

where the people can be found/

for let there be no mistake/

it is here           that their soulz are crystallized       & their perception n respiration transfigurd//

when the colonizd intellectual writin

for his people

uses the past he /must/ do so with the intention of openin up the future/

of spurring them inta action         & fosterin hope.

 

*I listened to a lot of beats while going through this week’s reading and while writing this post. Here are a few.

Edit/Update: A link to a definition of  “woke/stay woke” has been added. I also encourage everyone to listen to Erykah Badu’s Master Teacher and to check out staywoke.us

 

 

Re-learning language

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

 

 

Sydney is sick!  So I’ve quickly cobbled together an exercise of sorts.

I think we should stretch and move as we feel, um, moved while listening to  Wille Colon/Hector Lavoe, “Todo Tiene Su Final“. Then recite together the following passages from lost in language and sound:

Without examining our relationship to the English language, we cannot honestly “hear” the other speak, we cannot become intimate with what we do not respect. What we deem as “foreign” we cannot take to our hearts” 130

As beginning dancers we have no ego problems learning merely to walk again hopefully we will humble ourselves to learn to simply talk again. 135

Freedom is not a commodity, nor am i, nor any of my people.  26

Speaking of Combat Breath, if you have time, take a look at Alexis Gumbs’ “That Transformative Dark Space,” an inquiry into breath, freedom and occupation that responds to Shange in the context of concerns about police occupation. Hopefully in the future we can use some of Alexis Gumbs “Black Feminist Breathing” meditations.

 

Man & Woman: Running Parallel to Each Other

by Yemi 1 Comment
Man & Woman: Running Parallel to Each Other
Language of African Theatre Rewrite - Oluwayemisi Olorunwunmi

 

Ngugi’s Decolonizing the Mind — The Language of African Theatre

“Drama is closer to the dialectics of life than poetry and the fiction. Life is movement arising from the inherent contradiction and unity of opposites. Man and woman meet in a united dance of opposites out of which comes a human life separate from the two that gave it birth but incorporating features of both in such a way that it is recognizable at a glance that so and so is really product of so and so. The growth of that life depends on some cells dying and others being born (54).”

 

 Rewrite of Quote:

drama is clo/ser to the dialectics

of life than poetry/nd/ d fiction/

life is movement risin from d inherent contradiction nd unity of opposites/

man and woman

meet in a united dance of opposites/ out of which comes

 

a human life separate/

from d two that gave it birth/ but incorporating features of both/

in such a way that it is/ recognizable/

at a glance/

 

that so and so is really product of so and so

d growth of that life depends on som cells dying/ nd others being born

 

 

Rewriting the excerpt for Ngugi’s The Language in African Theatre was liberating. Breaking away from the structure of prose into a text that is more fluid deepened my understanding of the text. I created spaces of silence, so that as I read the text I could reflect on the words for a longer period of time. Using paragraph breaks at “/out of which comes” into “a human life” emphasized the literal meaning of the text. I could show how life would emerge on paper and through this the natural emergence of humans. Using slashes broke apart ideas that would normally be hard to digest. They also gave additionally pauses.

A change that I appreciate most is the shortening or contracting of words. I change the to “d.” I changed and to “nd” while also cutting off some letters to sharpen the intake and pronunciation of the words to give the reading beats that are easy to land on. It feels pleasant to drop those letters. It’s like getting rid of dead weight, like jumping into freedom and an alternative way of being. I also changed the visually display of the words to a form that could help me see how the author’s ideas spilled into and out of each other.

Moreover, Ngugi’s “The Language of African Theatre,” echoes many of Fanon’s gender sentiments in the chapter “Algeria Unveiled” of his A Dying Colonialism. Fanon says “This is why we must watch the parallel progress of this man and this woman, of this couple that brings death to the enemy, life to the revolution (57).”

His words provide a distinct way of organizing the ideas in the Ngugi quote . Man and woman running parallel to each other is similar to the way their dance is a dance of opposites. And the theme of life that emerges from two opposite individuals is consistent. Fanon highlights the differences between man and woman by touching on their societal roles, but the movement between the two – the curving, diving, shifting, spinning – shows the dynamic conversation that happens between to humans before birth.

Caribbean Feminism, Language and Translation- “Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature”

by Dania 1 Comment

Caribbean Feminism and Feminism?

 

At the Barnard Center for Research on Women’s “Caribbean Feminism on a Page series: Edwidge Danticat In Conversation With Victoria Brown” the conversation was grounded in what feminism meant for each of the authors. More specifically, Caribbean Feminism. From that I made a realization that even in a Feminism that is as specific as Caribbean Feminism, as it should be,there are various approaches, experiences and additives that goes along with saying and living one’s “Caribbean Feminism” because each individual experience.

Edwidge Danticat highlighted and defined the importance of what she called “Homegrown Feminism”, which is/are the feminism(s) that is/are curated to one’s experiences. The necessity to differentiate theorizing and experiencing Feminism(s) is rooted in mapping Caribbean Women’s existence, which Brown and Danticat exemplified through their writing. Though they are both women from the region known as the Caribbean, Danticat from Haiti and Brown from Trinidad, they have experienced subjugation and objectification differently and they have expressed it differently, which ties back to Danticat’s point about the importance of “Homegrown Feminism”.

Language was also a very important component of the conversation, the ways in which each author translates their feminism through their writing and the inability to not translate. For example, Edwidge talked about the difficulty to translate certain phrases between Creole, English, and French, whether it is out of the impossibility or out reverence of the home or “love” language. In “Decolonizing the Mind” Thiong’o, mentions, “In my view language was the most important vehicle through which that power fascinated and held the soul prisoner. The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation.” the recognition of the power of language and its translation(s) centralized Victoria Brown’s and Edwidge Danticat’s narratives and made it accessible to the audience. Additionally, Edwidge Danticat spoke about writing in English as opposed to French and accessibility to writing in Creole, which aligns with Thiong’o’s point about using language, a tool that was used by colonizers and imperialists, to express and curate experiences and record histories.

Ngugi and Language

by Melissa 2 Comments

The dual character of language as a carrier of culture and as a tool of communication allow it to be deployed for the benefit of communality and self-determination. Self-determination and communality serve as crucial points of resistance. But when located within an imperialist logic, language serves as a function of power and a as means by which the parameters of subjectivity are delineated for the colonized subject. The three integral aspects of communication outlined by Thiong’o are: its importance as a mode of creating and solidifying interrelationality through the division of labor, its usage through verbal signposts, and its function through the written word. Communication essentially creates patterns of life and produces naturalized truths about subjectivities. Colonized subjectivities are interpolated by the truths and logics of imperialism. That is, the images and conceptions of individual and collective identity are reconfigured via imperial tools that destroy “a people’s culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature” (16) while “[elevating] the language of the coloniser” (16). Thiong’o is interested in the “dissociation, divorce, [and] alienation” (17) this process ushers in. Written language became the most effective area of language domination because it created a disconnect between native student’s spoken world and their written world, creating colonial alienation.

the colonial “mother”

by Kiani 1 Comment

the colonial mother protects her chld
from itself/
from itz ego/ n from itz physiology
itz biology
n itz own unhappiness whch is/
itz very essence

(from Frantz Fanon’s ‘On National Culture’ pg. 211)

This quote was emotionally difficult to read– over and over again. It was difficult to parse out its components and to make it dance and to make it move because of the brevity of the trauma it alludes to. The quote describes a total manipulation– of identity, biology, physiology, the ego, and so on. It personifies and personalizes one’s relationship to colonialism. Without apology, this relationship is coded as emotionally, spiritually, and physically abusive. The colonial mother “cares for” her child by stripping the child of its identity and context, and thus its essence. This quote is extremely powerful in its ability to communicate what the relationship is not by listing exactly what is happening inside of it.

overwhelmingly beautiful you

by Kim Hall 3 Comments

Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled”–Post by Michelle Loo

“A strand of hair, a bit of forehead, a segment of an ‘overwhelmingly beautiful’ face glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train, may suffice to keep alive and strengthen the European’s persistence in his irrational conviction that the Algerian woman is the queen of all women” (43).

A strand of hair

a [bit] of forehead

a segment of an overwhelmingly beautiful face

overwhelmingly beautiful

glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train,

yeh you

may suffice to keep alive / strengthen / reinforce the European’s persistence / irrational conviction that the Algerian woman

the overwhelmingly beautiful you

is

the

queen of all women.

 

Breaking the quote into several lines emphasize the pace and flow of the train of thoughts. It begins with short observations, “A strand of hair,” “a [bit] of forehead,” a segment of an overwhelmingly beautiful face,” but then the pattern changes to no longer listing an observation but describing what about the observation, “glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train,” alerting the reader that the poem is ready to go somewhere. “yeh you” is the final scream at the reader to pay attention because the following lines are going to be quick and insightful. The next line explains the significance and violence behind the observations listed in the beginning of the poem. It does so in the longest line of the poem with slashes instead of line breaks to separate fragments in order to convey the overwhelmingness of this unraveling of thoughts. I added extra adjectives to this line because the explanation in this line is so important and I wanted the message to be clear, that the colonizer is persistent and aggressive. This is especially important since the tone in the following lines is no longer direct and straightforward.

I feel that including “the overwhelmingly beautiful you” at the end of the poem turns the poem’s observation [European’s persistence to save the Algerian women] into an action. It demonstrates the tactics they use to approach Algerian women, which is direct and flattering. The Algerian is saying “the overwhelmingly beautiful you / is / the / queen of all women,” who wouldn’t want to join a movement that declares this conviction? It seems that Shange uses the rhetorical “you” in her pieces to do just this. It is a powerful tool to “show and not just tell” her point. By including “yeh you” towards the middle of the poem catches the reader off guard, insinuating that, “while you might not realize it right away, but I am talking about you, this is about you”, referring to the descriptors the poem begins with and what the poem is about.

The Quest for Relevance

by Clarke 1 Comment

calling for

re-discovery &  re-sumption of our language

calling for

re-generative re-connection with

millions of re-volutionary tongues in Africa

& the world over demanding liberation.

it is a . . . calling for

re-discovery of our language

the re-al language of humankind/ the language of struggle

it is the universoul language

underlying all speech & words of our history.

struggle. struggle/

makes history. struggle/

makes us. in struggle/

is our history/ our language & our being.

struggle begins wherever we are

in whatever we do/ then

we become part of those millions

whom martin carter once saw

sleeping not to dream

but

dreaming to change the world.

Rewriting Ngugi’s final passage in “The Quest for Relevance”  allowed me to reinterpret and add meaning to a passage that had already challenged me as it was written in its original prose. Using more space enabled me to draw attention to words and phrases Ngugi repeats, most notably the word “struggle”. While this repetition is apparent in the prose, allowing the word to spread over three lines rather than one and form a sort of shape instead of remain within a straight line forces recognition of the word and its significance in the text. Separating the prefix “re” from words that imply “again” as well as from those that do not (i.e. “real”) inspired new thoughts about the ways “realness” is formed by continuities and cycles, particularly in terms of what Ngugi expresses about the nature of language, culture, and struggle. I deliberately uncapitalized most words, but was not sure of whether or not to capitalize “Africa” which led me to consider Shange’s capitalization choices and their implications.