November 2015 – The Worlds of Ntozake Shange and Digital Storytelling

studying shange: student interviews parte deux

announcements

by Nia on November 30, 2015 0 Comments

We’ve got a room! We’ve got a schedule! Let’s get down to business!

Reminder: I would like to explore how/why we are”studying shange.” Instead of talking about potential projects (which I am still open to do) we will discuss how students are experiencing this class and reading Shange with “carnal intellectuality” in mind. Students may group together to be interviewed (this is highly encouraged amongst students who read Shange together). The interviews will also attempt to incorporate Shange’s methods into the format. Be prepared to experiment.

Original “studying shange” post

Creation is everything you do make something

by Melissa on November 16, 2015 2 Comments

CREATION IS

EVERYTHING YOU DO

MAKE SOMETHING

With this compelling order, I set out to create a zine.

During my reading of Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, I underwent a series of deeply personal transformations that I wanted to document. I became interested in creating a zine as an archival document. In it, I have included pieces of poetry and stories that I have written as well as pieces written by Shange herself. Creating a zine was a way that I could engage with the work in both tactile and spiritual ways and it illuminated some new aspects of what an archival process means. This archival process sometimes meant reading old love letters aloud. Or cutting out clippings from brochures I had been keeping as souvenirs from significant events.

My guidelines for creating a zine:

Everything you do: to walk, and speak, and touch.
Make something: rely upon the imagination, engage with memory, insert pieces of yourself into all that you do

The zine has come to life in its own way. It is an embodiment of places, things, memories. It is an ongoing project that I am using to explore different ways of creating literature, encapsulating memory, and fracturing the static notion of time. It has also pushed me to further interrogate the process of engaging with the personal as political and vice versa. How can my personal, intimate interactions with the world be mobilized as political tools?

This process of blending the personal and the political is a prominent aspect of Shange’s work. In this effort, Shange has often mobilized the feminine — imposing it upon the realms of art, politics, movement building and organizing. This isn’t merely a gratuitous mechanism aimed at making a “feminist” gesture, any feminist gesture, but a revelatory process. One that uncovers the deeply feminine impulses behind Black resistance, activism, and healing. These feminine impulses are situated in Black women’s knowledge and world-making practices. How we have learned to grow and survive relies upon the ways in which Black women have practiced knowledge and world-making through their crafting, cooking, singing, dancing, loving, birthing, mothering etc.

For me, a zine presents the possibility to build on the practice of creating and resisting via intimacy and the personal.

This podcast, by BCRW Research Assistant Michelle Chen, discusses the radical (anti white supremacist, anti classist, anti racist) feminist ideology from which zines have emerged.

“The Power of Craft”

The power of combining the mind and the body to create.

To do — to make do.

The power of the mind, the eye, the hand and the heart

To make the original connections.

TO create what is needed: a fire, a pot, a hoe, a knife,

A cup, shelter, cloth, tools.

To grasp

The significance of the power of craft

Is to be eager to create a whole life.

I found this in a Womanspirit publishing that was released during the Summer solstice 1982 while looking through the Barnard Center for Research on Women archives. The piece describes craft as a process that often melds the spirit and body to the object being created. The crafting process diverges from professionalized forms of creating art and is intuitively resistant to mass-production and manufacturing, making it inaccessible to commercialist impulses of capitalism. “The mind and the hand of the creator is part of the end product — “the spirit” of a work is apparent because of these unbroken connections.” (25).

Zines embody the spirit of craft in these feminine, anti-capitalist intuitions.

Ready, Set, Search!

by Kim Hall on November 16, 2015 0 Comments

Larry Neal as a teacher. Image from the Schomburg Photo division

Our next class will be with Steven Fullwood from the Schomburg, but in our usual classroom on campus. In preparation for his visit, I’d like you to do an archive assignment that encourages you to use the finding aids we’ve gotten in the past few weeks. You can locate the assignment along with the relevant finding aides in Courseworks (Archival materials folder). Below is my attempt at doing the assignment, so you can get a sense of what I’m looking for. You don’t need to blog your answers, but please do write them down on the assignment sheet.

1). Identify one Schomburg COLLECTION that you might want to review. (The suggested collections list supplied by Steven is in Courseworks).

Collection name and call number: Larry Neal Papers, Sc MG 344

What, if any, restrictions are on this collection? None that I can find

What is interesting to you about the Collection? Larry Neale was an important theorist of BAM who was in Harlem about the same time Shange was at Barnard and published an edition of Zora Neale Hurston’s autobiography, which suggests he didn’t entirely ignore women wroters. He also was specifically interested in music and theater and wrote about some of the same musicians Shange cites.

2). Identify ONE item from the Schomburg archives that you might want to see (it can be in the collection chosen in #1 or not)

Item Name: The Rise of the Black Consciousness in the 70’s

Give series, sub-series and item number if available b. 21 f. 2

Why did you pick this item? This seems to be both about the 70s and written in the 70s, so I’m interested to see if this unpublished essay speaks to what was going on artistically/politically when Shange was working on for colored girls.

3). Identify ONE item from the Ntozake Shange papers that you might want to examine. (The Pathfinder and Collection list are in Courseworks)

Item Name/Title: Flyers for “Ntozake Shange Poetess” at Experience II-Nu’s Black Coffee House in Boston

Give Box and Folder #s: Box 24; folder 3

Why did you pick this item? I was intrigued by the gendered/obsolete “poetess” in the title and am wondering if “Black Coffee House” is also related to some kind of blackness. Since its a flyer, it might be visually interesting as well.

4). Identify ONE item not from the Schomburg or Ntozake Shange papers.

Item Name: I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes 1988

Archive: NYPL Billy Rose Collection

Collection: Circle Repertory Company Papers

Call #, box or other location information: b. 266 f. 7

Why did you pick this item? It says that it’s an unpublished script “with evaluation.” Interested in seeing an unfiltered response to a work in its early stages.

5). What did you discover about the search engines and finding aides while doing this assignment?

Ntozake is occasionally spelled Ntosake! Also, the search by date function is very useful.

6). What were your frustrations in completing this assignment?

Sometimes the NYPL search engine is very slow and I don’t seem to be able to duplicate searches very well. For example, I wrote down the call number of an item, but not the title, went back to the same collection and couldn’t find the item.

Shange’s Colored Creations March Us Deep Inside The Black Reality

Blogposts

by Yemi on November 15, 2015 0 Comments

A certain aura of fantasy is present when we read the different spells featured in the novel as well as digest Indigo’s relationship to her dolls and to the greater neighborhood. This fantasy has a mystic quality, a magic that shows through the lives of Hilda’s daughter. Each child crafts their femininity and therefore life in a way that is alternative from their mother’s. This is a story about family, but more so a collection, a community of women.

Shange integrates the possessions of these women: many letters, instructions for Cypress’ home, recipes, spells, journal entries into the novel perhaps because, as Indigo says, “black people needed so many things.” Our job as a reader is not only absorb the lives of the main characters but also to be engaged in the methods of healing that they follow, which is very much ingrained in these pieces of things. The complete consciousness phrase that Indigo came into was that “black people needed so many things” AND so she would “[make] up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.”

It is this nature of creation, for self, and also for the communal that distinguishes the development of women. One contemporary example of this is the Neo-soul duo band group Oshun which was created in NYC. Their name and their music work to empower women.

Cypress, Sassafrass and Indigo becomes a text where Shange elucidates the experience of African-American women whose lives (though they might be “stuck”) build on and reflect African values: the tradition of the home and cooking, the legacy that a mother passes through to her children, and being “third-world” descendants in various American states. The lives of these four women happens at the same time a slave narrative unfolds. There is also a tie to Nigerian culture that culminates when Sassafrass performs a dance to shake the spirit of Mitch away (because, according to Indigo it “was the spirit of things that mattered (5).” During her dance, Oshun, a supreme divinity, comes to inhabit her body and her step. Moreover, the importance of deities is represented when Shange includes number eight of Cypresses’ house rules: “8. Don’t touch the alter for the Orishas:” minor Nigerian gods. Perfect enough, the name the duo choose as their title honors the work of Yoruba deities in showcasing the virtue of femininity and holiness of womanhood.

In one of their songs, Gyenyame, which means “expect for God/ the supremacy of God,” the duo sings:

“Orishas, we your teachers, open up your eyes and recognize

It’s a, a reason for the demons

Refuse to comply, speak your mind, don’t abide

We the

Orishas, we your teachers, sister deities, the rivers and the seas

Orishas, your teachers, Queens of Africa, Oshun and Yemoja”

The band Oshun more than just calls upon Orishas and embodies them like Sassafrass, they put forward contemporary ideas of African-American empowerment, much of which stems from consciousness. The following video aims to quantify what it means for blacks to be “free somebody[s] (7)” in this moment in time.

The Daughter Identity

by Nadia on November 12, 2015 4 Comments

WGSBS For the past few weeks, I have been thinking about the concept of being a daughter and how that is a motif in Shange’s work. My understanding of the saliency of (what I call) “daughtership” was further developed through my reading of Sassafrass, Cyprus and Indigo and during the Africana Department event “Who’s Going to Sing A Black Girl’s Song?” A Conversation on Black Girlhood with distinguished Africana alumnae Asali Solomon ‘95 and Alexis Pauline Gumbs ‘04.

At the event on Black Girlhood, I asked the alumnae about the connotations the word daughter has. They said daughter denotes duty, great gifts, a claim a
nd aspirational dreams that are given to them by their mothers. These terms Asali and Alexis used are relevant to daughters Sassafrass, Cyprus and Indigo. They all have the duties. Indigo put away childish things, like her dolls, to step into womanhood and Cyprus and Sassafrass have to attract particular kinds of men as future husbands. They each have unique gifts as musicians, dancers and weavers and they all have to negotiate their mother’s aspirations for their lives and futures.

As I reflected back on each of the daughters’ their relationships with their mother, I realized that much of the mother-daughter relationship is dictated by their relationships to men. Hilda Effania’s letters to her daughters often include advice and warnings about men. Also, when one of the daughters gifts her mother with sexy lingerie, Hilda Effania comments on how their father would have come home more often if she owned this article of clothing.

In thinking about the role of men in mother-daughter relationships, Cypress’ dream made me wonder what mother-daughter relationships would look like if men did not exist – in a world where “there were only Mothers and Daughters” (185). I wonder if the fixation on men in mother-daughter relationships has anything to do with mother’s teaching their daughters about how to navigate relationships with men for their own survival and out of a desire to protect their daughters.

This brings me to a concept which I learned of at the Black Girlhood event which is idea of “mothering oneself” as well as daughters mothering their mothers. As each of the daughters in the novel enter womanhood, they begin to mother themselves through self-nurturing and self-care, especially when their actions and beliefs are contrary to those of their mother’s desire for them. While negotiating the limitations of the mothering their own mothers can provide as they become their own woman in the coming of age process, Sassafrass, Cyprus and Indigo being to take on the role of a mother in addition to that of a daughter as they care for themselves and as they look to have daughters of their own.

The Personal Is The Political

by Nadia on November 12, 2015 1 Comment

In my Black Scholar readings and my trip to the Schomburg, I was confronted with the message that the personal is the political. The Black Sexism Debate states,

“We cannot solve our “personal” problems individually, nor by pretending they are not real. What is required is a collective struggle to change the social conditions that create so many “personal” and social problems.”

In thinking about my final project, I have been interested in mental health and mental illness in communities of color and how it is dealt with both individually and collectively. During the Schomburg visit, I came across an article written by Vanessa Northington Gamble which referenced mental health issues in the black community. For Gamble, her “personal” issues battling depression are political. When she was having difficulties at her job due to her depression she said, “I believed that my performance [work] represented not that of an individual, but that of a race.” This illustrates how mental health issues are political issues in communities of color because individual experiences get generalized to be representative of the whole race. As Gamble also writes about her mother’s suicide attempts and thus, her subsequent struggle with depression, there seems to be the idea that mental health issues are in some way generational and/or genetic.

Gamble’s article from the Schomburg archives

Gamble invokes bell hooks in arguing that the personal is political. When Gamble wanted to start writing about her battle with depression, her colleague criticized her for: “wanting to put her business out on the street.” However, she counters this by emphasizing that voicing our personal struggles is key to liberation. Gamble says,

“Telling our stories, hooks insists, is a crucial strategy for the self-recovery of black women because it allows us to acknowledge our pain, reach out for solace and find ways of healing. There is no healing in silence… hooks views personal transformation through a political lens. She sees self-hate, low self-esteem, and addiction disorders as reflections of a political system that devalues the lives of black people… Personal recovery, hooks argues, must go hand in hand with political struggles, because no level of individual self-actualization alone can sustain the marginalized and oppressed. We must be linked to collective struggle, to communities of resistance that move us outwards, into the world.”

In my readings and encounters with archival material, I was struck by how the two were in conversation with each other. It is my hope that through my final project that I can bring Shange’s experience and that of other black female artists’ to the forefront so that other women of color can be empowered with the knowledge that their “personal” is political.

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

student blogpost

by Dania on November 12, 2015 0 Comments

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)

A Recipe & Letter of Love

Blogposts

by Danielle on November 12, 2015 1 Comment

This was my second time reading Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. I looked more delicately at the recipes woven throughout the story. They are the yarn through which Hilda Effania/Mama stays connected to her daughters after they leaver her house. With the first line of the novel in mind (“When there is a woman, there is magic”), I think, especially as a child, there is a magic in motherhood. Mama knows how to heal wounds and almost always has advice that reassures. But as her daughters grow older and leave the nest, Mama finds that some of her advice seems to have staled (though, not for a lack of trying) in reaching the new lifestyles her daughters are living on their own. At moments when Sassafrass & Cypress are more distant from their mama’s hopes for their future/livelihood/womanhood, they find comfort and connection in her recipes.

Cypress has a recipe—My Mama & Her Mama ‘Fore Her: Codfish Cakes (Accra). The ingredients have immortalized over time, bridging the connection and comfort of generations; Mama’s recipes are magic that transcend time and space. Cypress is across the country from her home but—through cooking—in dialogue with the love of her maternal roots.

Mama’s Kwanza Recipe (for Sassafrass): Duck with Mixed Oyster Stuffing

1 duck, 5-7 pounds, cleaned & seasoned                        1 medium onion, chopped

1 pan cornbread                                                                   1 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons butter                                                           1 ground red pepper pod

1/2 cup celery, chopped                                                      1 dozen oysters (medium)

Salt & fine black pepper to taste                                       1 cup pecans, chopped

Wet the cornbread, break into bits and fry in the butter with the celery and onion. Add seasonings. As mixture gets crisp, add oysters & pecans. Stuff your duck & bake in a 450° oven for 15 minutes, then lower to 350° and bake 15 minutes for each pound. Baste every 15 minutes. Don’t forget to cover the bottoms of the pan with water, and be sure to keep the duck tightly covered until the last 15 minutes, when the skin can be brown.

Mama is pained that Sassafrass trades in Christmas for Kwanza (“When you said you weren’t having Christmas, I kept wondering where I had failed”), but she sends a recipe for her daughter’s holiday feast. Mama’s love and recipe from home transcends distance, and takes a seat at her daughter’s table. It’s her way of participating in her daughter’s life without physically being there. The recipe name (“Kwanza” replaces “Christmas”) Mama coins speaks to how recipes are like letters constantly in dialogue; they are conversations not fixed, but alive and shaped by the artists of each generation.

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Throughout reading the novel, I listened to Martha Reeves & The Vandellas album Dancing in the Street, and I thought I’d share my favorite song!

photo/audio essays on Santería and Gullah/Geechee culture

Uncategorized

by Sophia on November 12, 2015 3 Comments

Audio: Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santería
produced by Olavo Alén Rodríguez (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1995), 1 hour

On Contemporary Cuban Practice of Santería
Photographed and captioned by Phil Clarke Hill

: The ceremony of San Lazaro at El Rincón church lasts all night, culminating in a midnight mass. Over the course of the night and the following day, thousands of people from all walks of life visit to make offerings and ask for help from San Lazaro.

: Each of these clay statues is an Ellegua, which Santería adherents receive in order as they gradually complete their initiations.

: A babalawo blessing the people with ceremonial corn powder. Over hundreds of years, believers have projected their worship of the Orishas onto images of Catholic saints. Nowadays, the religion is a true mixture of beliefs, with adherents taking different aspects on board—either leaning towards the Catholic or African side, depending on their personal choices.

: Animal sacrifice is an integral part of the rituals. Before the sacrifice, the animal is passed between those involved to take away their negative energy, which will then be released through the animal’s death. Music is also an important part of the practice; the Orishas are raised and brought into the physical realm through drumming and African-style call-and-response chanting.

: Santería has been practiced in Cuba for hundreds of years, ever since the first slaves arrived from Nigeria. Many Cubans, even if they don’t actively practice the religion, still consult santeros about issues in their lives.

: Santeros believe that blood rituals are necessary to release the negative energy and spirits of those involved. Certain parts of the ceremony have to be performed by a babalawo, who can only be a man who has reached the highest level of initiation.

: Herbal mixtures are used to cleanse those involved in the ceremony, in addition to the spraying of rum as a blessing. The mixtures are prepared by hand for a long time so they can encase the positive, cleansing energy from those making them.

: Santería is not regarded as an official religion by the state and therefore has no official places of worship; the ceremonies are carried out in the houses of the santeros. Various charms represent luck and protection. This pigeon was hanging above the door throughout the ritual, which lasts several days.

: The pilgrimage of San Lazaro is the largest religious event in Cuba. Every December 17, people come from all over the country to pray for good health or to be healed. Many of them go to great lengths to show their dedication, such as this man who dragged a concrete statue on his back for nine miles.

: Santeria grew in social ceneres called cabildos. The cabildo pictured is one of the oldest in Cuba; it’s located in Palmira, which is often regarded as the birthplace of Santería.

Shadows of the Gullah Geechee
Photographed by Pete Marovich
Captioned by Jordan G. Teicher

: Gullah Grub restaurant owner Bill Green and Ed Atkins hang out in Atkins Bait Shop, one of the oldest businesses in Beaufort County.

: Robert Middleton, deacon at First African Baptist Church on St. Helena, sits in the Coffin Point praise house with an old bible that has been used in the praise house for over 60 years.

: Jery Bennet Taylor sews sweetgrass baskets on the porch at Gullah Grub, a restaurant on St. Helena Island specializing in traditional Gullah food.

: Queen Quet Marquetta L. Goodwine, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Nation, stands outside of one of the three remaining praise houses on St. Helena Island, S.C. Built during the slave era, they were small places of worship for the Gullah and still serve an important spiritual role in the Gullah community.

: Frank Bailey with a tray full of freshly picked beans from his garden in the Hog Hammock community on Sapelo Island.

: Darryl Stoneworth and his wife Angela carry the sweetgrass they harvested at the Okeetee Hunt Club near Hardeeville, South Carolina. With all of the traditional areas to harvest the grass in Mt. Pleasant now shut off to the Gullah due to the development of shopping centers and private residential communities, Stoneworth travels the 90 miles south to Hardeeville a few times each week during the month of July to pull the grass.

: Golf carts from private communities on Daufuskie Island surround the First Union African Baptist. Traditionally a Gullah church, it is now also used by residents of the private gated communities and visitors to the island.

: Members of the First Union African Baptist church discuss island issues and politics following a service on Daufuskie Island.

: A young member of Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church walks toward the shore after being baptized in Skull Creek. Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church is one of the few churches on Hilton Head Island that still performs traditional river baptisms. Other churches have given up the practice as development has limited their access to the island’s waterways.

: Eddie Grant Jr. tends his mother’s garden as new condominiums rise along her property line. While Grantâ’s family has managed to hold onto their land, many other Gullah Geechee residents have been forced to sell their property due to rampant development and escalating taxes.

Outsiders: Uncle John’s Wisdom

by Nicole on November 12, 2015 2 Comments

“Them whites what owned slaves took everythin’ was ourselves & didn’t even keep it fo’ they own selves. Just threw it on away, ya heah. Took the drums what they could, but they couldn’t take our feet. Took them languages what we speak…But the fiddle was the talkin’ one. The fiddle be callin’ our gods what left us/be givin’ back some devilment & hope in our bodies worn down & lonely over these fields & kitchens. Why white folks so dumb, they was thinkin’ that if we didn’t have nothin’ of our own, they could come controllin’, meddlin’, whippin’ our sense on outta us. But the Colored smart, ya see. The Colored got some wits to em, you & me, we ain’t the onliest ones be talkin’ wit the unreal. What ya think music is, whatchu think the blues be, & them get happy church musics is about, but talkin’ with the unreal what’s mo’ real than most folks ever gonna know.”

(Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, pg. 22-23).

I find that often in literature the people who are outcasts and considered outside of society’s bounds are the most insightful. It is interesting that Indigo has the most thoughtful and honest conversation with an adult who is somewhat outside of the community because he is eccentric and lives outdoors. Uncle John is able to speak freely to Indigo despite her age because he separated from normal society. He is honest with Indigo about what it means that black people must take advantage of other modes of communication and expression. Indigo’s mother adores her and does her best to protect her but she wants to shelter her child instead of providing her with the necessary truths to prepare her for black womanhood. Not treating Indigo like a young adult is her mother’s way of protecting her and being a good parent. Unlike her mother, Uncle John does not feel the need to shelter Indigo. Uncle John is characterized as being “off” and does not subscribe to the unwritten rules of keeping children naive, so he sees no fault in educating Indigo on the history of her people.

The presence of white people in this passage, and in this book as a whole, is extremely different from the Shange works that we have read so far. In for colored girls, white people are not present nor seem to be of much importance. Of course, the systems that oppress the black women in the choreopoem are sometimes the result of a white presence, but in her manual for young black women how to deal with a white presence is not the goal. Instead she focuses on the relationships of black women with black men, other black women and self exploration. In Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo there is discussion about how black people must live their lives in response to the presence of white people around them. In this passage Uncle John schools Indigo on the mistakes slave masters maid when trying to subdue the spirits and cultures of black slaves. He does not conceal his contempt and disapproval of white people and their actions towards black people, in a way that we have yet not seen Shange of her characters refer to white people.

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