In Nappy Edges by Ntozake Shange and “The Art of Transformation:Parallels in the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movement” a pervasive theme was collective movements that are geared towards “self-determination” and “self-definition”. Ntozake Shange highlighted the ways in which black narratives and more specifically black girls/women narratives in literature can be consolidated, as she mentions “we, as a people, or as a literary cult, or a literary culture/have not demanded singularity from our writers. we cd all sound the same. Come from the same region. be the same gender. born the same year.& though none of the above is true, a black writer can away with/ abscond & covet from him or herself/ the richness of his or her person/long before a black musician cd” (3/), Shange’s acknowledgement about the possibility and ability to consolidate and allow the black narratives into a singular existence draws me to a point made by Victoria Durden in “Monologues for Colored Girls: Shange’s Influence on Barnard’s All Women-of-Color Vagina Monologues” which states “The announcement of our decision generated controversy, enough so that we received a call from V-Day’s national executive board inquiring about the nature of our decision, and how we had come to it as a group. In the announcement, we had stated that we believed the monologues had historically overlooked women of color. We were asked, in our conversations with V-Day board members and Eve Ensler, why we had argued that The Vagina Monologues had done this. We were told that Ensler and board members were confused by such an assertion, as V-Day was a “global movement” that worked to end sexual violence against all women. With regards to the content of the play, we were told that, “women of all races have delivered and were interviewed in the process of writing the monologues.” , Durden’s and the co-directors of the Vagina Monolgue: All Women of Color Cast at Columbia University demanded that the cast of Vagina Monologues be casted with individuals who identified as women of color and were met refusal to have their narratives to be monolithic and condensed entity. Shange’s statement shows that though black naratives may be similar because of ancestry, ethnicity, colonial socialization etc they are indeed different and the directors of the Vagina Monologues: All Women of Color Cast at Columbia University made that very clear by demanding legibility and refusing to have narratives be read as one despite Ensler’s claim about of women of color being included in interviews, which further proves Shange’s point about have the one black individual’s narrative be read as a collective. This also relates to the idea of language and Caribbean Feminism that I brought in my post last week about Edwidge Danticat’s and Victoria Brown’s, though Brown and Danticat both as feminists and are on common grounds about what feminism should be, the way they write and speak and experience their feminisms defer. Collins also acknowledges the role that that “self-determination”and “self-definition” plays in curating movements whether they may be Feminist or Arts movements, which often go together.
