Philosophical Underpinnings–from movement to breath?
Ntozake and Savannah Shange (PBS screenshot)
i can’t count the number of times i have viscerally wanted to attack deform n maim the language that i waz taught to hate myself in/ the language that perpetuates the notions that cause pain to every black child as he/she learns to speak of the world & the “self” (LLS 19).
in everything I have ever written & everything I hope to write/ i have made use of what Frantz Fanon called “combat breath” (LLS 19).
In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture.
—Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born
. . . a woman who can believe in herself, who is a fighter, and who continues to struggle to create a livable space around her, is demonstrating to her daughter that these possibilities exist
—Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (247)
I wanted to tell you a bit about why we are reading Fanon and Rich today. (The readings are now linked to the appropriate week on the syllabus–and we will have presentations from Elizabeth and Anna Bella!) Shange reads so widely that we could spend an entire semester reading her identified influences from Ngugi wa T’iongo and Edouard Glissant to Judy Grahn and Jessica Hagedorn. Fanon’s influence as you will see below, is pretty obvious in Shange’s thoughts about breath and movement. Although, to my memory, Shange doesn’t allude to Rich directly in the poetry, in an interview, she named Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Born as very influential to her thinking. In different ways, Fanon and Rich are concerned with the roles of women in national culture. If you’ve read Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, you know it is colored by a misogynoir that is not as present in the later works.
As you can tell from “my pen is a machete,” Shange’s use of the term “combat breath,” very explicitly refers to the appendix of the chapter “Algeria Unveiled” in Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism,* which has become central –and hotly–debated in discussions of colonial rule, traditionalism in colonized societies and the role of women in revolution. So too, Fanon’s “Of National Culture” from The Wretched of the Earth is influential in Pan-African and decolonizing thought.
Adrienne Rich was a premiere feminist philosopher-poet of the 1950s and 60s. Her Of Woman Born ( was highly controversial; just as we will see with Shange and Michelle Wallace (albeit in a specifically black/misogynoir-ish field), Rich was criticized for being strident and anti-male. Although by now you have probably been innundated with feminist theories of mothering and the roles of mothering in culture, her’s was amongst the earliest published, popular works. As you can see from the introduction, she has rethought some of her claims, particularly around race and class.
DON’T FORGET YOU HAVE A REQUIRED BLOG PROMPT THIS WEEK!
WEEK 3 “My Pen is a Machete”: Transforming English
i can’t count the number of times i have viscerally wanted to attack deform n maim the language that i waz taught to hate myself in/ the language that perpetuates the notions that cause pain to every black child as he/she learns to speak of the world & the “self” (LLS 19).
Take one quote/excerpt from Fanon or Rich and “read like Shange.” That is, write out the prose quote as if it were a poem–make it “move,” make the spacing reflect breath, emphasis or silence. Then reflect a bit on what this re-writing of the quote means to you/how it affected the meaning of the prose, etc.