poet as orator/performer/activist; poetry as translation

by Nia 2 Comments

Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography

mozambique
angola
salvador & johannesburg
the atlantic side of nicaragua costa rica
cuba puerto rico
charleston & savannah/ haiti
panama canal/ the yucatan
manila
la habana
guyana
santiago & brixton
near managua/
pétionville
abidjan
chicago
trinidad
san juan
capetown & palestine
luanda
chicago

These are all the places Shange connects alludes to in “Bocas” in A Daughter’s Geography. She names them as her numerous children related though they “cannot speak/the same language.” (Shange). She connects all the children of Africa and the African diaspora through experience not just through heritage. There is the simple explanation for these relationships; the one often invoked by artists and academics alike: that each ethnicity is just a stop on the trade route. Mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons became Basian, Jamaican, American, and Cuban through trade and bartering. They developed new cultures and claimed happenstance for their own.

“but a long time ago/ we boarded ships/ locked in
depths of seas our spirits/ kisst the earth
on the atlantic side of nicaragua costa rica
our lips traced the edges of cuba puerto rico
charleston & savannah/ in haiti
we embraced &
made children of the new world” (Shange)

Shange goes farther than this connection. She unites these ethnicities and nationalities through their experiences of oppression and subjugation at the hands of similar if not the same groups of oppressors.

“but we fight the same old men/ in the new world… the same men who thought the earth waz flat
go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men”

She credits the experience of being marginalized and overcoming that marginalization as a uniting force of these colored people. The rhythms that emerged, the patios that formed, the food, the names, all point to a common experience. It is no surprise then that she had to make language move. When it moves, no matter what language it is, poems can capture, unite, and uplift her children. It doesn’t matter that one speaks Spanish, the other Portuguese; they use the movement in the poem, the space between the words, the history behind their creation to unite themselves as family.

I added some of my favorite spoken word poets from all over the diaspora.

http://operationelevation.tumblr.com/post/128567513644/bnv15

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Tiana Reid
    Nia, you bring up a lot of the fundamental questions of diaspora. I wonder especially about the role of the Atlantic, saltwater, and slaveships in Shange's work. Who is the "we" in "we boarded ships"? Is it the same "we" that (maybe) steps off? You refer also to the development of culture through movement and practice whether dance or food. I'm wondering how we can also think through the particularities of those "makings" in a way that is attuned to the context and place, like the ones you list out, and perhaps the vast differences between and across black people in the diaspora.
  2. Kim Hall
    Tiana asked the important questions, but I want to suggest that we could also point to this question of differences across the diaspora in the spoken word poets you embed, They do evoke food, movement, experience, but it feels like naming, mixing and perhaps the stance of "invested distance" are ways of negotiating both the links and the distance?

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