In Dialogue: “somebody walked off wid alla my stuff” & “sorry”

by Danielle 2 Comments

Giving up a part of the (or even the whole) self to sustain/nourish/love men is a very female experience. For Colored Girls offers the common understanding of sisterhood as a way to uncover and embrace the music of your spirit, and as a way for women—especially women of color—to reclaim their ownership/pride of the self.

I read the choreopoem while watching/listening to a Middlebury College adaptation. Experiencing Shange’s work as a performance completely changed the way I was able to experience and engage with the text. I want to look specifically at the poems “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff” and “sorry” and how they are in dialogue with each other. The first poem talks about how relationships/men can take from women the very essence of themselves/all that is nourishing (“my laugh”, “my rhythms & my voice” & “my calloused feet & quick language”). The lady in green is the sole woman on the stage, yet watching the performance as a part of an audience, reacting claps and snaps fight the strong presence of isolation onstage. The crowd erupted in snaps after she said, “now you can’t have me less i give me away”. Within the audience exists a common understanding that sometimes for love we—women—give up all of the parts of ourselves that we love. But women need to handle their own stuff. They need to love themselves and stop taking care of themselves last.

There is a blurring of transition to “sorry”. The lights do not dim/there is no re-staging; the other women of color walk out one by one. They talk about how “sorry” isn’t nourishing. “Sorry” doesn’t make up for what men have taken. “Sorry” doesn’t allow women to feel wanted, understood & happy. I think the blurring of borders between the two poems speaks to the narrative as a whole. This isolated experience is easier understood in the company of other women. Shange shows that through sisterhood, women find space to navigate these painful experiences, and are able to find a place to care and love themselves.

Here is the adaptation I watched while reading the choreopoem…

Here are some songs I listened to while watching/reading For Colored Girls…

“Dancing in the Streets”/Martha & The Vandellas

“Stay in My Corner”/The Dells

“Che Che Colé”/ Willie Colón

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Kim Hall
    Great post Danielle. Although the text gives you a lot of cues, I think seeing it really gives you the true feeling of fcg as a communal experience. Maybe this is also a way into thinking abt how it broke conventions in Broadway, where the proscenium stage creates its own distance from the audience. I also really like the discussion of the "im/materiality" of "stuff in “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff” and “sorry.” BTW, I think there is a music blogpost to be had in the relationship between "Dancin' in the Street' and "dark phrases"
  2. Tiana Reid
    Thanks for sharing your (perhaps real-time?) experience while reading and watching the Middlebury adaptation and noting the role of performance--especially the way performance can have different contexts, temporalities, conditions, etc. When rereading for colored girls this time around, I wondered how to read the spatial organization, e.g. the waterfall-like "to be dancin / to be dancin / baya" on page 30. Professor Hall mentioned stage cues, do the spaces or textual blanks always mean pauses? What about capital letters?

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