god is a black woman who lives in the moon

by Onyekachi Iwu 2 Comments

Image result for solange as moon

Solange Moon Performance on SNL

After our last class, I’ve been very interest in the concept of the “moon” in Shange’s work. In our last class, we talked about the representation of the “moon” in Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. In that text, the “moon” had two meanings that existed in a dichotomy. This dichotomy, which I came to understand as “South vs North”, lives throughout the text. The “South” moon is spiritual and lives internally, often inside women as a healing force. This moon is related to themes of cycles, menstruation, transformation, and magic. The “North” moon is external, relating to themes of technology, moving away from tradition, and social mobility. It’s a destination, a place to land.

 

The idea of the moon returns in the text for this week in the poem “We Need A God Who Bleeds Now”.

 

“we need a god who bleeds now

a god whose wounds are not

some small male vengeance

some pitiful concession to humility

a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord

we need a god who bleeds

spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet

thick & warm like the breath of her

our mothers tearing to let us in

this place breaks open

like our mothers bleeding

the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance

the moon tugs the seas

to hold her/to hold her

embrace swelling hills/i am

not wounded i am bleeding to life

 

Here, rather than moon representing an internal healing spirit present in women or a destination for the black race to strive towards, it becomes an external healing life force that can affect us all. This representation is most similar to the “South” moon in Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo. This moon is a god, or spirit, who is female that can direct us all towards healing. This concept reminded me of Solange’s SNL performance of Crane’s In The Sky, a song we have already discussed connects to black women’s search for healing. In this performance, a moon hangs behind her as she is dressed as a god-like female moon figure.

 

In the poem, Shange argues “we need a god who bleeds now, a god whose wounds are not some small male vengeance”. This god is described to have a “lunar vulva”. A connection is drawn again between the concept of the moon and menstruation. In a very cisnormative sense, Shange argues that men bleed from violence, while women bleed from menstruation. Therefore, when men bleed, they are connected to death, while when women bleed, they are connected to life. Through her “scarlet showers” she is able to rebirth us. She can heal the patriarchal violence that has called the planet to “heave”.

 

God here is recharacterized as a maternal, feminine life force rather than a violent, patriarchal force that is often understood in the Christian content. God is a mother, rather than a father. This a god centered in healing. She “embraces” and “holds”, a force that lives through tender actions.

 

The use of “now” creates a sense that this need for change is eternal. It will always be “now” when we read this poem.

 

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    Lovely reading of the poem Kachi --and very illustrative still from Solange-- I agree that the poem bears marks of what I would call 70s feminism that relies somewhat on cisnormative divisions of male and female and I think the next generation's challenge is to evolve new forms of imagery. I also agree with your reading that the moon in the verse is an external healing force, it feels to me like, by the end of the second stanza, she collapses external/internal just as she collapses time in the final stanzas as you point out. The movement of the last three lines from "the planet" to "i" suggests that this is a bit of the "god in myself" that we see in fcg? A eternal oneness?
  2. Asha Futterman
    I wonder if focusing womanhood and healing around the moon is inherently cisnormative because one of the main reasons we connect the two is the moon's ties to menstrual cycles? While I think that menstruation should be de-stigmatized, I feel that centering women's goddesses, motherhood (shange also writes in We Need A God Who Bleeds Now that mothers bleed, implying that all mothers menstruate), and healing around the moon and menstruation, which is beautiful and poetic but also exclusionary. In this "now" it seems appropriate to shift the definition of womanhood so a definitive part of it is something other than a biological/beautiful process that only some women and also some men go through.

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