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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Savannah’s Geography – Ntozake Archive Finds

by Zachery 0 Comments

Our class spent in the archives was without a doubt the most engaged I’ve ever been in a college class. The excitement and honor I felt to look through Ntozake’s personal collection of books, awards, jewelry, manuscripts, etc. was unmatched. Through it all, however, what stood out most to me were the photo albums.

The first photo album that I went through featured a range of photos of Ntozake with what appeared to be friends/family. There is something so personal about photo albums, the ways in which we select and organize which snapshots to hold dear, that made these albums feel personal even to me despite having no connection to the content.

The second photo album, after two visits to the archives, remains my favorite find. This album, unlike the others, was focused specifically on Ntozake’s daughter Savanah. The album was comprised largely of photos that appear to be taken by Ntozake which was truly a beautiful sight–– to see a young Savannah through Ntozake’s eyes . Ones that displayed Ntozake were alongside Savannah…reading a story book or posing for a casual portrait.

What stood out to me more than the photos, however, was a poem that Ntozake wrote to Savannah.

Savannah

brown sugar cookie

how I miss you….

 

The words of her letter lay on top of a river of stamped hearts. As always, Ntozake even in her expressions of love bends traditional form and language. “Guard mi corazon…” Inserting Spanish and coupling her writing with imagery, she seems encourage Savannah to navigate the world freely as she does solely in the form of the writing.

Funnily, my immediate response was to send the letter to my mother. On the phone later that same day, we raved about it together. Our phone call ended with my mom saying “We didn’t have classes like these when I was in college, I feel so blessed to experience them through you now.”

 

Healing Justice: Feeling Shange

by Hossain 0 Comments

Yesterday, October 1st, 2019, was one of the most unique experiences of my life. It is still hard to put it in to words, what I felt in Barnard’s James Room last night, but it was Shange. Is that possible? To use her name as an adjective? It was Shange. Healing Justice, in a way, is Shange and her work. That’s quite some pressure to put on a singular woman, though, but she is Shange. Last night, Ebony Noelle Golden described her as a “firestar” and a firestar, she is. Last night, the James Room was decolonized for two and a half hours. I was lucky enough to be in that room last night, where we were all invited to participate in ceremony, veneration, and prostration to Shange. I know myself to be a monotheist, but Shange is not short of a goddess. Perhaps, in some way, her spirit last night, was sharing energies with Sechita, and her ephemeral presence was felt. I was in a meditative state. I keep thinking zen, but that’s not the right word. It was meditative, perhaps, even religious. I am a person that believes in the exchange of energies, but is often skeptical of spirits. Perhaps it is my own fear? But yesterday, I spoke to Shange. I felt her there, and I was unafraid. My mind was white matter, white light, blank, and present. She granted me that gift–to be present. I felt myself, a different part of me wake up- Samaha Hossain.

I’m posting this almost a whole month after attending the healing justice event. I often write when I feel moved and I wrote that quickly one afternoon when I felt compelled to put my thoughts and feelings on paper. I made the decision to publish the unedited and unfiltered version of my thoughts about the Healing Justice event. I am inspired by Shange and her philosophy of dismantling and using the oppressive English language in ways that work best for our tongues and our bodies. The thoughts are above are my own, untouched by the conventions of academic expectations and without the pressure of explaining my feelings and consciousness to make sense to another. In essence, that night and being surrounded by Shange and her works granted me this feeling of entitlement and empowerment over my intellectual property. I have to say, there’s something quite satisfying about seeing your name follow a quote, it feels right.

As I conclude this post, I felt a lot that night. And something I have come to realize is that words won’t do it justice. It was an embodied and internalized experience. But it was one that made me think. It made me reach out to my mentors and loved ones who have supported me throughout my time at Barnard and reminded me to show them more love. It made me reconnect with my faith and want to explore different sects. We ended the ceremony that night in communal song. I remember swaying my body, closing my eyes, and basking in my presence of mind. But healing and song reminded me of the Sufi sect of Islam, which is different from what I practice. Sufism is the sect more involved with mysticism and music in prayer; the whirling dervishes of Turkey may be a popular representation of this. I bring this up because a Sufi song kept coming to mind as I sat through the ceremony. Kun Faya Kun is a Sufi song that was popularized by a Bollywood movie. I have attached the link below so that folks may listen, if they have the time. Kun Faya Kun translated from Arabic to English, means, “to be.” It means to exist and manifest oneself in the world as a being as per Allah’s will. To me, it also means to be present and conscious of your existence and the might of the universe, which I think fit perfectly with what I was feeling at the healing justice event.

As I stood in the shower that night, I put my phone by the window. I turned my volume on high, and hit play on Kun Faya Kun. I closed my eyes and swayed once more as the steam and droplets of water took over my body and filled my air with song and life. White light, blank space, my natural high. I felt it once more. I felt her and Him and myself.

Simply, I was.

Reading Zake: Vamo Hablar Ingles

by Ortiz 0 Comments

 

As I read for coloured girls by Shange, I was saddened by the idea that I hadn’t found her before. Before, when my curling hair and español didn’t fit in my mouth, didn’t fit in my writing, in my thoughts. When my own identity alienated me from my conceived self, a self that was white-passing (at least in South Jamaica, where white was just skin), and desired a white family and white traditions. As I read Shange, 21 and no longer desiring a white

identity, but desperately clinging to the aspects of my identity that are deeply Latina and give me culture, sabor at Barnard, I am deeply moved by her words. I annotated her work, as pictured, expressing the way my heart stopped when her stanzas did, or when it left me full of something unrecognizable – was it love for myself, or the people I identify with? Shange’s writing is not just feminist writing, it is not just transnational and globalized, it is not just about culture and music and movement, it is about humanity as its core. It is about empathy and love and passion, pain, and healing and for these reasons, for the shared experiences Shange expresses in for coloured girls¸ I am able to tie myself to a story that is not necessarily, explicitly my own.

we deal wit emotion too much

so why don’t we go on ahead & be white then/

& make everythin dry & abstract wit no rhythm & no

reelin for sheer sensual pleasure/ yes let’s go on & be white. (58-59)

— and I wanted to be white, for so long, because, as Shange expresses, maybe being white means not having to address the idea of the woman of color that is too sensitive, too concerned about herself. Maybe this was a way to remove myself from myself? But as Shange states, “bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma / i havent conquered yet” (59). Haven’t conquered because I refuse to view myself as separate, fragmented pieces, at least not anymore.

Now, as I read other literary works, I search for myself. I don’t search for a regurgitated image of what others think I am, because I am too complicated, too sanctified, too magic, too music (60-61) to be one thing.

El español de Shange, the reference to the music of my childhood, merengue, immediately reminded me of Fefita’s performance of Vamo Hablar Ingles; watching as a woman dominate a stage, surrounded by music and movement and culture / my culture adopted a new meaning. A song that only in asserting to “hablar ingles” is adopting the same transnational, global connections that Shange evokes, and in a sense, it’s all tied together.

 

 

this midnight oil / Rewriting Cherríe Moraga

by Ortiz 0 Comments

we write letters to each other / incessantly / across a kitchen table / third wrld feminist strategy / is plotted.

we tlk long hours / into the night / it is when this midnight oil is burning /inthoseafterhours / that we secretly reclaim our goddesses / and our female-identified / cultural tradition

“i got myself home, / lit me some candles / … / put on sum

dinah and / aretha” (rushin)

 

In “Between the Lines: On Culture, Class, and Homophobia” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Cherríe Moraga describes the limitations of a strictly racialized reading of a woman’s experience. In this passage, Moraga describes the act of turning towards each other for “strength and sustenance” (102) as we search for our desire to have “all [our] sisters of color actively identified and involved as feminists” (102). Adopting Shange’s poetic style of writing, I chose this passage to emphasize the act of coming together through mediums of letters, music, or the spoken word. By deconstructing the original structure, including the quote by Rushin, I can now read Moraga and Rushin’s writing in the way it makes me feel; the words now dance and move and pause in a way that expresses a collectiveness, a warmth inherent in what we desire “third wrld feminist strategy” to be. It is “to write letters / to tlk long hours / put on sum dinah and / aretha” that we move past fractured images of the self, where our “whole” identities can meld into a single movement that acknowledges and is fueled by this “midnight oil,” this difference, that is learned through these mediums.