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One of the parts of for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf that struck me most was the Lady in Orange’s poem describing her relationship with a man who continually cheats on her with his ex-lover. She vividly describes her pain, stating “you put my heart in the bottom of/ yr shoe”, describing the way this man has abused and disrespected her and their relationship. Shange complicates the narrative of the “woman scorned” in showing that Lady in Orange vacillates between caring for herself and describing her pain. On one hand, she is able to find her own joy in dancing, for example. She states that she does not “leave bitterness in somebody else’s cup”, including the “other woman” and eventually states that she has left “sorrow on the curb” for herself. Yet, at the same time, she seems to redirect the injury the “woman scorned” supposedly takes out on others onto herself, stating “I have died in a real way”, and is not satisfied by her new lover. Shange beautifully shows that healing is not a unidirectional process in any way. Healing requires an examination and acceptance of pain in addition to the strength to look past it, and the joy and sorrow of moving on are wrapped up in each other.

I truly have not seen a work that captures the many dimensions of healing as well as Shange, but I was reminded of Beyoncé’s “Pray You Catch Me”. In this song, Beyoncé focuses more on her attachment to her lover than in Shange’s work. However, the song does capture how her pain is rooted in a deep love, which continues her hope that he can and will return her prayers. This mirrors Shange’s description of the willingness to hold on to love and joy through suffering.

One of the themes Shange addresses in nappy edges is exercising her own narrative voice as a black woman. The first chapter of her collection is “things i wd say”. I interpreted Shange’s use of “wd say” as opposed to “am saying” or simply” “things I say” as her stating that these are things she would say given the opportunity and space that is kept from her. In putting the title in lowercase, Shange also draws attention to how her language as a writer has been diminished, and she attributes this to the development of a singular identity of black artists. In the formation of a singular narrative, the voices of individuals have been drowned out. A monolithic “language”, as stated in Juan Goytisolo’s quote, has homogenized individual experience and must be fought against if black women are to be heard. She goes on to describe the ways in which the works of black artists, musicians, poets, and writers have been inappropriately “boxed in” and flattened. She argues that until identities amongst artists are made distinct, “our spaces, language & therefore craft will not be nurtured consciously”. Therefore, black artists and their identities must be made distinct in order for their voices, their own voices, to be known and grown.

The media included above is Toyin Odutola’s  (Barnard’s resident artist!) “uncertain, yet reserved”. She says of her work “where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities”. Toyin’s work, similar to Shange’s, pushes against a singular narrative. Her entire quote is below.

“skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can literally be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. from there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.” -Toyin Ojin Odutola