Art as personal

Lisa Gail Collins explores the ways in which the Black Arts and Feminist Arts Movements are respectively produced from visions of Black and Feminist collective resistance. Both movements symbolize attempts to shape communal consciousness through intellectualism and art as channels of self-awareness and collective identity making. These processes are important cornerstones of political aims of both groups to rupture social order. Collins points out that despite their mirroring ideologies, these two political movements remained disjointed. “Only a vital handful of courageous visionaries…drew from and shaped both movements.” (Collins 274)  Ntozake Shange is found among the brave few listed by Collins. Shange combines the respective values found in the Black Arts and Feminist Art Movements, creating a new tradition of art –  incorporating poetry, storytelling, and dance – that retains a commitment to collectivity and resistance in its consciousness-raising efforts. Shange requires her readers to remain cognizant of the multivalent voices of Blackness and womanness that cross temporal bounds, creating an interweaving texture of kinship and collectivity. For Shange, the poet’s voice comes from a collective, and through her voice, the poet can “be everywhere/all at once” (5). In “takin a solo/ a poetic possibility/ a poetic imperative”, Shange insists upon unbinding the “energy levels” (5) toward which a poet’s voice extends itself. Meaning, the voice of the poet should remain untethered to expectations of producing an empirical analysis about the collective condition of Blackness, or womanness. But this notion is not to be divorced from Shange’s dedication to connecting all parts of her identity and consciousness to her art. For Shange, the interconnectedness of varying narratives across spatial and temporal bounds contribute to the formation of an individual voice. A voice that is not individual in its conception or existence – as it emerges from, and is forged within a collective model of kinship – but individual in its reliance upon the personal (21) to produce art.

I rang the bell/to k’s walkup/

the men/sitting outside/the

bodega in/ a circle/slapping/

dominos

onto a low/round

table/reminding

me of

my father’s wake/men

he knew/gathered underneath the

breadfruit tree

spilling/sips of rum in/

between/cracks

shouts/partaking in their own/

farewell/these men/

brown/lined brows/

these men/

blck/

carry/peaks of rollin

black/mountains

gentle sloping/on

brwn brows/

do i

need help/getting upstairs/

cantanme/a shake

reminding me/

father/

falls quickly/in love

with a brwn girl/her rolling ass/

bronze thighs/

round mouth/curving

hips/wet feet/

in love/heaving

chest warm

home/rippling

home cookin

sizzlin/poppin corn

roasted

open fire/a humid night sky/

do i

need help/

getting home