Narration through Poems & Photography

In For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange writes

but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical

dilemma/ I havent conquered yet / do you see the point

my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of

soul & gender / my love is too delicate to have thrown

back on my face (45)

This passage towards the end of the choreopoem pulled me to think about the different ways that Shange has been able to narrate the complexities of being a black woman. She is able to convey pain, sisterhood, power, mundaneness, creativity, etc. through words and movement. While it is a different lady who narrates different situations, they all come together at several parts of the poem and interact with each other. This gives a sense of individuality (or isolation, the feeling that you are the only one experiencing these situations) but also discourse (the ladies form a sisterhood of shared experiences).

This form of narration reminded me of a photo series by Carrie Mae Weems. Titled “The Kitchen Series”(1990), the photo series also does an incredible job of narrating a scene with few props and sequencing. The photos take place at a kitchen table with a low hanging light, centering a black woman (Weems, herself) doing a series of activities in each photo. Many things remain constant in this photo series, such as the kitchen table, the tones of the photo, the angle of the shot, and the black woman. But each scene conveys a different situation through the small changes in props and people.  These subtle changes encourage the audience to draw connections between the photos but to also think about the person and the place in creative and different ways. Through this technique, Weems is able to narrate the complexities of black womanhood. Below are just a few from the series, but it highlights how Weems is thinking about the different aspects of being a black woman. Some photos highlight herself to be a partner (lover), a distressed self, a friend, a mother, a sexual being, etc.

I am interested in thinking more about Shange and Weem’s process of creating that has lead them to be able to accurately reflect and portray what they feel and see without reducing themselves or situations into tropes. Many of the scenarios and situations they present are familiar and shared but encourages the audience to think more about the complexities rather than reduce it to just that scene.