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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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reflection on Shange’s visit

by Phanesia Pharel 1 Comment

I have listened to Ms. Shange speak twice and both times there has been this air around her. She truly has power.

I have been questioning the idea of humanity lately. It doesn’t seem to be possible in a world like the one we live in. Somehow in her work, I find there is meaning in the world. I think Shange has the superpower of healing or at least alleviating pain with her words.

The thing I take the most away with me is despite the sadness I felt when she could not imagine a blackness without oppression, I cannot recall Shange inviting sadness into the world with her words. I truly believe her presence challenges oppression. It’s a gift.

The poem that has stuck the most with me from Wild Beauty is
“A word is a miracle”

A word is a miracle
just letters that somehow wind up
clumsy fingers/ with meaning
my life was inarticulate
no one knew what I meant
I cd capture no beauty or wistful memory
a word on a blank page, though
that is triumphant
infinite illusion/ hard core fact
of this messy world where
whole cities are poisoned and my universe
is an error a word
beckoning jihadis/ blessing lepers
urging revolutions, a smile.
a miracle of sound
to be cherished

Millions of species are going extinct and the human race might become one of them. I think what makes me sad is the idea of Shange’s legacy that she writes of wanting in the prologue of “Wild Beauty” not lasting. Poetry is one thing that separates us from every other species. At least poetry as we know it. The world and Shange’s legacy is in very clumsy fingers.

Nappy Edges: Beauty standards around the world

by Aissata Ba 1 Comment

the daughters believed they were ugly dumb & dark

like hades/ like mud/ like beetles/ & filth…

a daughter convinced her beauty an aberration

her love a fungus/ her womb a fantasy/

left the asylum of her home on a hunch

she wd find someone who cd survive tenderness

she wd feed someone who waz in need of her fruits

she wd gather herself an eldorado of her own making

a space/ empty of envy/ of hate

she a daughter refused to answer her mother’s calls

she refused to believe in the enmity of her sister

The second line was the most important to me. The line alone refers to two determinants of the definition of beauty. Shange emphasizes that the daughter is the individual who convinced herself that her beauty is unwelcome, unusual and far from normal. However, at the same time, we have to think about what or who defines the normal, the usual and the welcomed and who these definition are meant for. In that one single line, we witness the importance of self and social definitions of what and who is beautiful. When consistently looking and seeing beauty be manifested by people who do not look like you, then you come to accept or view yourself as not beautiful.

What I also find interesting is Shange’s continuous refusal to follow the rules of the English grammar. Shange’s style remains just as integral a part of her poetry as the content. In keeping with her focus on the importance of cultivating a personal writerly voice, she uses grammar, spelling, language, and tone to emphasize her themes. As she does in most of her poetry, Shange uses slashes to separate clauses, rather than line breaks. She also chooses not to use standard punctuation like apostrophes, capitalizations, and removes the letters from certain words, for example writing “wd” instead of “would” or “cuz” instead of “because”. This is all part of her mission to express herself the way that she chooses to, not the way that she is expected to by both the confines of standard English and by those who associate poetry with a specific way of expressing oneself.

Though I find this video very fascinating, I am hesitant on the use of the word “unusual.”  Unusual to whom? Why is it unusual? I realize that this video was meant for a certain audiences who are unfamiliar with these cultures, but also Americans have the tendency to “other” anything that is not theirs. Being that this is a topic about beauty around the world, I would have advised against the usage of the word “unusual.”

SHANGE IS AN INSPIRATION!

by Perry O'Parsons 1 Comment

 

I found Ntozake Shange’s talk on black dance to be totally inspiring. I was practically on the edge of my seat the entire time. I found that during both the talk and the lunch she radiated an energy that seemed to include her listeners. Made me hear the music. Made me want to get up and dance. Made me want to get up and do something. Make something happen. That is the feeling I look for all around me and I think it is what makes her writing and her words so affective and infectious. The way she writes reaches out and places the words in the readers mouth.

I had never read her work before taking this course. Her work is freeing! It reminds me that writing can take so many forms. Letters and words are a malleable substance in her hands that can take shapes I have never even dreamed of. And not just words, but dance. And music. Sights and sounds and movements, everything, is just a something to be shaped into whatever you want. Whatever you feel. Not to say that it’s easy or without effort. She is brilliant. She is a master of what she does. But her work does not live by rules simply because someone says they are so, she has actively and effortfully remade language to push against those rules.

The impression I am left with from her visit, is that she is a woman constantly in motion, constantly in action. Even when a disability has restricted her motion. Seeing her as she is now, still alive and spirited, and having read the work she had produced throughout her life, I am inspired to achieve that level of action/motion!

 

This picture reminds me of that kind of action/movement/motion/creation that I’m talking about!

Shange Visit

by Brianna Sturkey 1 Comment

I found Ntozake Shange’s visit surprisingly light-hearted and funny. I was expecting to engage in a strictly academic conversation intermingled topics with feminism, capitalism, systems of gender and racial oppression, and poetry. To my astonishment, we engaged deeply with all these topics with funny interjections of Shange’s real life experiences that were both profound with amusing undertones. For me, this visit demystified Shange and revealed her soft underbelly of hardships tainted with racism and gender discrimination but she was adamant how these experiences shaped her into the woman she is today and did not hinder her. This courageous attitude was inspiring and really stuck with me. However, Shange shocked me when she said that she could not conceive a world without the degradation and subjugation of Black people and people of color. This attitude caught me off guard and discouraged me slightly. If this self proclaimed and famous Black feminist and activist could not fathom a world of complete freedom, then how naive was I? Although Shange stuck with her statement she re-envisioned artwork and storytelling as moments of material freedom and how these moments, although fleeting, can be worth everything. I agree with Shange that her work is exemplary of imagined freedom and healing for Black woman in particular, but I do not agree that this world is incapable of granting rights to every individual and that people of color can only experience power through the imagination of artists. I know that the world will never be perfect, but I do not think that it is imperfect for us to continue to strive for that ideal. I hope that Shange’s visit at Barnard reminded her of the spirit of activism which aroused her in her youth and how she is a role model to women like me looking to change the world.