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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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AFEN3816: What to expect

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

Dear all, people had questions about the Spring course, so I wanted to say that its a bit of a work in progress. The last time I taught it we were working both with the International Center for Photography and The Schomburg Center.  This will be a quieter experience, but here’s what to expect: We hopefully will combine further investigations of Ntozake’s work with some collaborative work and your own creation of some sort of digital project.  Here’s what that looks like, pending further conversations with the Digital Humanities Center.

–the themes will be collaboration, improvisation, and archiving. Most of the works  (Shange’s and other peoples) we examine will be self-conscious about those qualities  (I don’t know if you can read it, but I have put in a screenshot of works we might be reading, Spell #7 is not on that list, but will probably be there).

–I expect that within the first month of classes you will have conceived of a digitally based project that you will work on throughout the semester.

— I hope we will work together on one project, which right now is looking like a published Zotero biblography on Shange & her impact.

–I hoping that we will have a workshop on choreographing a poem with +SLMDance company.

 

Proposed Book list for 2019

 

Scalar, Part 2_ & for colored girls

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

Cast of 2019 production of for colored girls . . .at The Public

Hello all,  Taylor showed us some wonderful ways to use Scalar, both in itself and along with other digital tools.  Those who attended probably realized that you forget how to use tools if you don’t use the regularly! In that spirit, I encourage/invite those of you with blogposts left to do at least one of them on Scalar, try tagging and using the widgets.  Although I realize that these will be experimental, if you are trying to be particularly bodacious, please feel free to put “this is an experiment” at the top.

One useful tip from Taylor: Think about combining analogue and digital content– perhaps use your own drawings, paintings or collages with annotations and other media.

Taylor shared her outline and the links from the session with us. You can find it here.  I put at the bottom of that outline a spreadsheet for you to let us know what you are thinking about doing for your final project and a way to contact each other so that you might  go to the DHC together or figure out problems.  If you have problem accessing the spreadsheet, you can do it here.

From Food to Faith: What’s in a Name?

by Eliana 1 Comment

In If I can cook / you know God can, Ntozake Shange artfully toys with the boundaries of human sensation. Shange’s language forces the reader to experience instead of simply read, reworking thresholds of sight and taste in a conversation of identity. Like other works of Shange’s, If I can cook / you know God can reads as a radical travelogue, tracing identity in diaspora. In her exploration of the role of food in the African-American experience, Shange writes on nations beyond the United States putting recipes in conversation with memory, history, and religion. 

Chapter 8 connects history and religion engaging with African American slaves and Native Americans subject to the brutalization of colonialism. Shange writes, “we changed, made necessary readjustments to our gods and belief systems to accommodate the Christianity thrust upon us as our salvation.” Statements like these, reflecting a truth often neglected in history, challenges both me and Shange similarly. Throughout her works, Shange wrestles with reclaiming spirituality/religion from the colonizer and using it as a liberatory force. As indicated in the piece’s title, the Old Testament holds the notion that humans were created in God’s image. 

Abraham and Sarah are viewed as the patriarch and matriarch for all Abrahamic religions, including Christianity. Like Ntozake Shange, though, their names were not Abraham and Sarah at the start of their story. While Shakespeare may tell us that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” matriarchs Shange and Sarah share a different narrative. Theirs is one in which being created in the image of God means an affirmation of identity constructed through the changing of one’s name — a liberatory tool we see today through name changes affirming gender identity, religious identity, and an act dignifying history of black identity. Sarah’s name is Sarai at the start of the bible (which translates to “my princess”). The grammatically possessive nature of Sarai, and how the change in her name represents an affirmation of identity. Here, being made in God’s image as suggested in Shange’s title of her book, but also her own title, refers to transitioning from Sarai to Sarah —from the possessed to the possessor, entering uncharted maternal waters.