Combat Poetry/ Creating A Multilingual Narrative

In “Ntozake Shange’s Multilingual Poetics of Relation”, Ania Spyra draws a connection between the English Only/ Official English movements of the 1980’s and Shange’s publication of poetry that fiercely creates a multilingual narrative and identity. Movements to cement English as the official language in the US have been reoccurring/racist themes in history since the 1700s. Turning to English has notoriously been an ugly tactic of forced assimilation, and a defense mechanism against immigration and people of color threatening the colonialist power dynamic. The 1980s saw a revival as English was declared the official language in the commonwealth of Virginia. Last week, I had the opportunity to ask Shange whether A Daughter’s Geography (1983) and From Okra to Greens (1984) were a reaction to these homogenizing efforts. She explained that her choreopoems were/are an unconscious response, and that she sees her poetry as a kind of “combat poetry”.

With our class’s return to A Daughter’s Geography, I wanted to explore how Shange deconstructs English to create multilingual and transnational narratives. In “Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography”, children have geographical names—“daughter/ trinidad”, “son/ san juan”. The slash seems to simultaneously build and deconstruct. In her choreoessay, “my pen is a machete”, Shange writes of how she has to take language “apart to the bone/ so that the malignancies fall away/ leaving us space to literally create our own image.” Here, the slash undecks colonialist grammar, but creates a shared family/identity among people of color across the Americas. Shange writes, “go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men”. She creates movement as she alludes to the absence of borders; the world is not flat, but home to the flow of transnational identities. Shange noted that the slash can indicate a shift in tone and voice. Perhaps the slash is a new beat—the shift of identity/geography—celebrating and connecting a patchwork of peoples all part of the same rhythm and history. The last line—“we are feeding our children the sun”—is fierce, and identity is vibrant. Through deconstructing English and building multilingual narratives, African-Americans can find revolution in the feast of the sun—the vessel of life.

I want to conclude with a quote Shange said during her class visit: “When you take control of the language, you take control of life. When you take control of life, you can have a movement. When you have a movement, you can have a revolution.”

Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography

i have a daughter/ mozambique
i have a son/ angola
our twins
salvador & johannesburg/ cannot speak
the same language
but we fight the same old men/ in the new world
we are so hungry for the morning
we’re trying to feed our children the sun
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
but old men spit on us/ shackled our limbs
but for a minute
our cries are the panama canal/ the yucatan
we poured thru more sea/ more ships/ to manila
ah ha we’re back again
everybody in manila awready speaks spanish
the old men sent for the archbishop of canterbury
“can whole continents be excommunicated?”
“what wd happen to the children?”
“wd their allegiance slip over the edge?”
“don’t worry bout lumumba/ don’t even think bout
ho chi minh/ the dead cant procreate”
so say the old men
but I have a daughter/ la habana
I have a son/ guyana
our twins
santiago & brixton/ cannot speak
the same language
yet we fight the same old men
the ones who think helicopters rhyme with hunger
who think patrol boats can confiscate a people
the ones whose dreams are full of none of our
children
the see mae west & harlow in whittled white cafes
near managua/ listening to primitive rhythms in
jungles near pétionville
with bejeweled benign nativess
ice skating in abidjan
unaware of the rest of us in chicago
all the dark urchins
rounding out the globe/ primitively whispering
the earth is not flat old men
there is no edge
no end to the new world
cuz I have a daughter/ trinidad
I have a son/ san juan
our twins
capetown & palestine/ cannot speak the same
language/ but we fight the same old men
the same men who thought the earth waz flat
go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men
you’ll see us in luanda, or the rest of us
in chicago
rounding out the morning/
we are feeding our children the sun