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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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loving urself is art / resistance is loving urself

by Kiani 11 Comments

This weekend, I was thumbing through ‘Three Pieces’ by Ntozake Shange and decided to focus on a play I have been half-halfheartedly reading for the past couple of months– “a photograph: lovers in motion.” This post is not meant to be a full grasp of the work, but simply a meditation on some of the themes that have resonated with me as a student in this class.

At its core, the work tackles what it means to make art, what it means to survive, and the intersections of these processes. The lives, love, and art of Sean, Michael, Nevada, Earl, and Claire intermingle in this play set in San Francisco, California in presumably the late 1970s. Sean, a budding and brooding photographer and artists, is at the heart of the love and the art in this piece. He’s fawned over by strong, beautiful, floating, dancing black women Michael, Nevada, and Claire.

Archive Find: Black music / Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis

by Danielle 1 Comment

Caption:

My archive find is from Pacifica Radio Archives. Joan Thornell interviews Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis for her “Another Perspective” series about the development of black music. Shange and Davis talk about Stevie Wonder, jazz, the differences between poetry and music and how each exists within a gendered space. The interview was produced at WPFW, Washington, DC in 1977.

The Well Told Story – Slavery in New York

by Nicole 1 Comment

In 2005, The New-York Historical Society created an exhibit called Slavery in New York. The exhibit existed on site at the museum for a period of time, but an online version of the exhibit was also created to last permanently on their website.

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The online exhibit was created based off of a physical exhibit at therefore its elements seem to be a re-imagination of what the physical exhibit looked like. I am sure this affected the feel of the exhibit because it was not originally created for an online platform. Our projects differ because our platform is solely digital and has framed how we think about the telling of our individual stories.