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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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“studying shange” – working title

by Nia 0 Comments

studying shange is a docu-series that hopes to capture and explore the ways in which new scholarship in created in the 21st century. The project seeks to answer the questions: “What does it mean to build scholarship and an archive of a living artist and scholar? (How) Does the student as collaborator methodology work in an undergraduate setting? Are Shange’s answers the only answers to questions the academic and cultural worlds have about her work? Where does her opinion factor in to the process of building scholarship? It will include interviews with the students in the Digital Shange Seminar. Students will discuss their individual archival projects as well as the process of the class itself. How did they come to selecting the projects to which they’ve ascribed themselves? How has their experience of the class and as academic collaborators been so far? Extra-university collaborators will explain how they’ve made the digital archiving process possible. I will also interview Professor Hall and others who initiated the study, and even Ntozake Shange herself.

 

Bad Girls In Three Parts: Reading “The Black Sexism Debate”

by Tiana Reid 0 Comments

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You bad girl

You sad girl

You’re such a dirty bad girl

— Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” (1979)

What correct analysis of this rotten capitalist dragon within which we live will legitimize the wholesale rape of black women by black men that goes on now within every city of this land?

— Audre Lorde, “The Great American Disease,” in “The Black Sexism Debate” issue of The Black Scholar (May/June, 1979)

 

How are we to read the 1979 special issue of The Black Scholar on the so-called “Black Sexism Debate”? What word in this title is up for discussion? (Hint: It’s the not the “black” part.) What does it mean that we are in the realm of a named dialogue? What does it mean that we have to name this discussion that is always up for debate? How do we confront the seemingly antiquated (read: racist, patriarchal, and biological) language that permeates the occasion for the issue, Robert Staples’s “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists”?

In this post, I’m not going to rehash any of the arguments from the issue or offer any of my own in part because I can imagine June Jordan in her hazy-beautiful voice (see above) saying, as she does in the opening to “Black Women haven’t ‘Got It All,” “All I have time to say to Robert Staples is this: Are you serious?” (39). Instead, I’m going to present a few provisional fragments as guideposts and entryways into this historical text that embodies such a fascinating affective register. I am totally serious.

Michelle Wallace, the Black Superwoman, and Storm

by gjs2130 1 Comment

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By: Gabrielle Smith

 

This weeks readings put Michelle Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman and Larry Neale’s The Black Arts Movement  in contact with each other. Some of the quotes I found the most interesting from Black Macho were:

“Ever since then it has really baffled me to hear black men say that black women have no time for feminism because being black comes first.” pg. 20

“But what he really wants was to be a man.” pg. 30

“Some black women are beginning to be honest with  themselves about seeing themselves as victims rather than superwomen.” pg. 174

One theme that Michelle Wallace and Larry Neal carried throughout both works relates to race relations. Detailing the impact that white/black women had on white/black men and vice versa. In showing Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman in class I aimed to highlight the interaction between Clay and Lola. Brining into the conversation about black and white America that Neal reminds us exist. Thinking about race relations allows us to connect the dots as to why black women have acquired this identity for being the “superwomen.”

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Speaking of black superwomen Storm is one of the most famous. This character was created by Marvel Comics in 1975. Storm first appeared in Giant-Size X-man #1. Storm has the ability to control the weather and she can fly. She eventually got married to her fellow superhero Black Panther. I can’t help but wonder if the Black Arts Movement has any influence of Storm’s characterization. O yeah, also, she was raised Harlem.

 

 

 

“so our children will know…& be proud”: Coltrane and black music

by Nicole 0 Comments

In Jayne Cortez’s poem, “How Long Has This Trane Been Gone,” she writes about the preservation of black legends and of black history. She says that Blues and Jazz artists have been forgotten; that their work of creating music for and about black people has been overlooked.

“Will you remember their names

or do they have no names

no lives—only products

to be used”

Cortez makes a claim for black music and its ability to allow black people to reclaim their history and a culture of their own. She believes that people have begun to forget the importance of the music of black artists who have died and that black people no longer appreciate the meaning of their artistry. There is an anxiety about forgetting, and therefore losing black culture.