Header Image - The Worlds of Ntozake Shange
The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Change Makers

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I enjoyed reading Harryette Mullen’s article after having read Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo because it helped me contextualize the text and understand its importance and the nuances to the story. The article emphasizes how intersectional and approachable the text is, and I found myself agreeing with Mullen’s comments.

Mullen writes that Shange is best known for being a poet, but that this novel includes “narrative, poetry, drama, letters, recipes, folklore, and magic spells.” (Mullen 206) Each of these different mediums, with the exception of narrative, on their own may not seem as approachable or cohesive, but how Shange puts them together in her novel makes it easy for readers to see each of these different platforms as a part of a whole.

The book is intersectional in several ways. Firstly, the topic of the story is intersectional in that it describes an intersectional experience, the “emergence of black feminist consciousness within communities of bohemian artists in the 1970s.” (Mullen 205) The novel is also intersectional in its approach to storytelling—through the use of over five different mediums Shange not only puts together a beautiful piece of literature, but celebrates the many ways in which writers choose to share their stories. The subjects of this story are also intersectional, from sharing Indigo’s journey at home to her sisters Cypress and Sassafrass’s stories as they journey away to find themselves and explore their respective passions of dance and art, the novel itself incorporates three different lives into one.

The piece of digital media that I included for this week’s post seemed appropriate to me for two reasons. The poet who wrote this piece was the first person that introduced me to spoken word poetry. Prior to hearing her work, I had never before experienced spoken word and my knowledge of poetry was very limited. She opened my eyes to a world of expression that I had previously never thought much of. Secondly, this piece combines spoken word with both music and cinematography.  In keeping with the theme of intersectional mediums, I wanted to include this piece as an example of a combination of platforms through which artists can communicate a message.

Azure Antoinette says, “we cling to the past, we cling to the normal we cling to the useful, accessible information, we define ourselves by those that have come before us, what they did or did not accomplish… you are your history.” In the first portion of the poem, she emphasizes embracing your past, but not defining ourselves solely based on the past. She continues her poem by saying, “You are a change maker… so when people ask you who you are, tell them you are a vessel, that your job is desperately trying to make the next Sistine Chapel with your hands tied behind your back and your eyes closed. Tell them you are working on creating a positive social system… when someone asks you how you are, them ‘em, I’m brilliant. When they as you where are you, tell them, I’m architecting change.” The purpose of this poem is for listeners to understand that your past is a part of you, but you are also an agent of change. Shange, throughout her written work and her life story, demonstrates how everybody can be a change maker, regardless of who you are.

On the Margins

by Makaria Yami 2 Comments

 

The readings this week helped me to learn about the Black Arts Movement and further understand the relationship between Black women and Black men. Prior to this class, I only had a vague understanding of what the Black Arts Movement was. The texts this week not only allowed me to get a better understanding of it, but they helped me learn about some of the criticisms associated with the movement. Going further, I thought about how those criticisms are a continuous theme throughout Shange’s work.

 

In Harryette Mullen’s article, Artistic Expression Was Flowing Everywhere: Alison Mills and Ntozake Shange, Black Bohemian feminists in the 1970s, Mullen talks about how Shange’s book, Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo, is unknown in comparison to her other works. Mullen says that Bohemian Black women “have existed on the margins of mainstream and black cultures” (Mullen 207). She also asserts that “militant revolutionaries of the 1960s tended to conflate their affirmation of blackness with a celebration of black masculinity” (Mullen 213).

 

The criticisms laid out by Mullen portray how Black women, specifically Bohemian Black women, are often overshadowed and their voices are forgotten. This made me think about the relationship between Sassafrass and Mitch in Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo. Shange writes, “Sassafrass caught herself focusing in on Mich again instead of herself, because she did want to be perfected for him, like he was perfected and creating all the time . . . She needed Mitch because Mitch was all she loved in herself” (Shange 80).

 

Just as the Black Arts Movement tended to leave Bohemian Black women on the margins, some Bohemian Black women, like Sassafrass, felt like they had to put themselves in the margins while centering the Black men in their lives. This idea is a common theme among women of color and is also discussed in Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf. The women in Shange’s poem talk about their complicated relationship with men, and how their voice and identity are on the margins, saying that they have “unseen performances” and “lyrics/ no voices.”

All of the work that we have read has shown me how Black women are always at the margins, whether it’s within the relationships Black women have with men or within the Black Arts Movement. What I truly love about Shange’s work is that she does the exact opposite; she crafts beautiful stories with Black women at the center point.

A photo of Black women during the BAM.

la vie boheme

by Phanesia Pharel 1 Comment

In”Artistic Expression was Flowing Everywhere” Alison Mills and Ntozake Shamje, Black Bohemian Feminists in the 1970s . HARRYETTE MULLEN states “Claiming their place as a significant force in U.S. literature in the 1970s, African-American women writers faced difficult choices involving contradictory values within the ashifting terrain of political, cultural, and aesthetic movements”. This quote for me is great but I would argue that there has never been a time for black women in America to not face the damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario as artists.

 

Two weeks ago we lightly talked about the violence and anger placed on Shange when she did not portray black men in the way that certain people within the black community would have preferred a different portrayal on the real physical, emotional and mental abuse of black women, non binary and trans folxs in our communities. Yet I feel like this is a consistent theme black women face. From Suzan Lori Parks, to Jamaica Kincaid many black female writers in the modern age have been held under the microscope. Roxanne Gay, for example, is a complicated case. She is a bisexual Haitian American woman who grew up with financial privilege as well as being light-skinned but wrote texts about women being brutalized in Haiti. She received severe homophobia, fatphobic, biphobia, sexist and all around trash responses from people. How do we help these women and future writers who may fear brutality in a response to humanity?

I have never thought critically about Ntozake as a bohemian artist and perhaps this is because we’re raised to see black women as simply black female artists. And sure being a black woman comes with so much but there is freedom in being able to write and not think about certain things or not think about other people. Jamaica Kincaid has a really that if you’re going to be a black woman who writes don’t be a black female writer, and to me, this means to color the lines that you want to not necessarily the lines defined for black women.

Here is a bit from “An equation for black people onstage” by Suzan Lori Parks (pulitzer prize winning playwright)

Can a White person be present onstage and not be an oppressor? Can a Black person be onstage and be other than oppressed? For the Black writer, are there Dramas other than race dramas? Does Black life consist of issues other than race issues?

And gee, there’s another thing: There is no such thing as THE Black Experience; that is, there are many experiences of being Black which are included under the rubric. Just think of all the different kinds of African peoples…

So. As a Black person writing for theatre, what is theatre good for? What can theatre do for us? We can “tell it like it is;” “tell it as it was;” “tell it as it could be.” In my plays I do all 3; and the writing is rich because we are not an impoverished people, but a wealthy people fallen on hard times.

I write plays because I love Black people. As there is no single “Black Experience,” there is no single “Black Aesthetic” and there is no one way to write or think or feel or dream or interpret or be interpreted. As African-Americans we should recognize this insidious essentialism for what it is: a fucked-up trap to reduce us to only one way of being. We should endeavor to show the world and ourselves our beautiful and powerfully infinite variety.

 

So for Shange I think she reaches there, she explores bohemia and sure hers is black but its outside of the stereotypical reach. She allows black women to heal onstage in For Colored Girls which I also believe is not considered in the reach. Do we want to in the future allow discussions of Shange where we ask less of the demeaning “how did u as a negro writee and whyy (cuz everything is 4 your race). I think Shange’s work as stated by SLP is infinite, do we speak of it that way?

 

Excited to hear your thoughts 🙂

Multiracial Feminism and For Colored Girls

by Makaria Yami 1 Comment

Reading Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism was insightful and reminded me of Shange’s work. The most interesting part of the paper was when Becky Thompson, the author, talked about the periodization of second-wave feminism.

 

Thompson says, “Ironically, the very period that white feminist historians typically treat as the period of decline within the movement is the period of mass mobilization among anti-racist women- both straight and lesbian” (Thompson 334). White feminists believed that mass mobilization for feminists issues was at a low in 1982, however, looking at the history of women of color activists and scholars, it’s clear that 1982 was the hight of multiracial feminism.

 

This was surprising to learn because it made me realize that my understanding of history has been formed through a white lens. It also made me angry because I learned that white women have erased the voices of women of color. It made me think of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf when Shange wrote:

 

“another song  with no singers

lyrics/ no voices

& interrupted solos

unseen performances”

 

The voices of women of color are always pushed aside to allow white women to be at the center and have control over any narrative.

 

In Thompson’s article, she talks about how women of color feminist organizations worked together and learned from each other. She says, “As the straight Black women interacted with the Black lesbians, the first generation Chinese women talked with the Native American activists, and the Latina women talked with the Black and white women about the walls that go up when people cannot speak Spanish…” (Thompson 343).

 

Thompson’s description of how women of color worked together to understand each other’s issues really made me think of how in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf, Shange wrote about women of color coming together to share their stories, understand each other, and form a community. Shange wrote:

 

“LADY IN BLUE:

i never did like to grind.

LADY IN YELLOW:

what other kind of dances are there?

LADY IN BLUE:

mambo, bomba, merengue . . .

LADY IN YELLOW:

Do you speak spanish?

LADY IN BLUE:

olà”

Although this was not the most prominent part of the Shange’s book, I loved it! The women were directly addressing each other, giving their opinions, and learning. It made me think of Thompson’s quote regarding women of color feminists coming together. It was one of my favorite themes in Shange’s book and it makes me happy to see that this relationship is reflected in the history of feminism.

A poster from the National Black Feminist Organization, created in 1973 to fight racism and sexism. This group was discussed in Thompson’s paper.

Response to Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism

by Perry O'Parsons 1 Comment

Thompson’s article clarified for me, a feeling I have had since I started this class. My understanding of the feminist movements before taking this class has been very skewed. Until taking this course, I never thought to question the narrative which either excludes/ignores the issue of race from the feminist movements or presents non-white feminisms as a reaction to white or “mainstream” feminism.

Overall, Thompson clearly articulates this widespread misunderstanding. Additionally, by citing specific vocabulary, history, authors and groups, Thompson offers a much fuller view of the important role of women of color in the history of second-wave feminism. She also outlines the pitfalls of hegemonic feminist thinking and quotes women of color on their opinions of the exclusion of women of color in feminist movements.

However, I find parts of her article are still somehow lacking. The title of the article, Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism suggests that she is writing specifically about the omission of women of color in the narrative of the feminist movements. In her article, however, she has a tendency to continuously pair women of color with working-class women, militant white women, and anti-racist feminists.

Plainly, I think this approach to the subject subtly continues the marginalization of the feminisms of women of color. Lots of parts of the article speak to the singularity and importance of multiracial feminism, but her pivots back to white contribution seem to undermine it.

Certainly it is important to discuss how white women can, and have been successful allies to women of color, but I felt the amount of space devoted to this topic in the article was unnecessary. I thought the article was meant to specifically discuss the exclusion of women of color, from the historical narrative of Second-Wave Feminism and their contributions and importance in that movement. I felt that the extensive discussion of white, anti-racist feminists was out of place in the article and didn’t directly serve the point.

The “Angry Black Women”

by Aissata Ba 2 Comments

I find it interesting and not at all surprising that no matter where we, as women of color, go, we have to re-identify and prove ourselves. We have to convince others why we belong and deserve to be where we are. We contribute so much to history but nothing is ever credited to us. I think this is one of the many things that make black feminism or any feminism different from that of white feminism. Up to my knowledge and I recognize that that knowledge is limited, white women do not have to go through the phase of needing to accepted or the desire and requirement to create a discourse space. By discourse space, I am referring to a space that welcomes all kinds of discourse. This is a necessary component and, most of the times, an obstacle for black women because their stories and contributions are always ignored or not given the credit at which it deserves. They are not allowed to be angry at the system that keeps them oppressed, they are not allowed to be intelligent as that would make them intimidating, they are not allowed to talk about race because “why does everything have to be about race” etc. This Becky Thompson mentions when talking about the ignored stores and contributions of women like Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, and Marilyn Buck. The stories we don’t learn about because “black women do not contribute much in intellectual communities.”

I found Thompson’s conversation about the small group of white women who were “determined to understand how white privilege had historically blocked cross-race alliances among women, and what they, as white women, needed to do to work closely with women of color.” An important aspect of fighting against any type of oppression is first realizing that it exists. Then comes recognizing who benefits and who surfers from this oppression. When the group that benefits from this oppression, even if it’s just a small population of them, realizes their privilege then and only then can there be hopes of eliminating that oppression.

 

 

Third Wave Feminists Before Second Wave Feminism

by Asha Futterman 2 Comments

 

In Recasting Second Wave Feminism, Thompson highlights that stories of “militant anti-racist women” have been excluded from the history of second wave feminism. Thompson argues that second wave feminism excludes the stories of many like those of Assata Shakur, Marilyn Buck, and Angela Davis. It seems as if histories of radicalism are suppressed and re-suppressed. Through my researching work I’ve been looking at radical feminists during the Harlem Renaissance. One woman who stuck out to me is Mae Mallory. She was revolutionary and political prisoner a good 10 years before Angela Davis got on the scene. While she was the first real political prisoner of the civil rights era, sentenced to 20 years in prison for “kidnapping” an elderly white KKK couple, her radical history is rarely listened to. She was a part of the Black NRA, she fought with the Freedom Riders, she worked with Black Nationalists, Malcolm X, Communists, she did what ever she could do to fight for freedom. Mallory didn’t fit into any boxes. She was too radical (didn’t agree with everything MLK had to say). She wasn’t radical enough (didn’t agree with everything the Black Pathers did either). Her wikipedia entry calls her a desegregationist because she fought to put her daughter in a white school, but she didn’t care for integration, she just wanted her daughter to take all the classes she would need to get into college. She didn’t act like how we expect women, Black, or heterosexual people to act. What’s more, she doesn’t fit into any periodization of 2nd wave feminism that Thompson recommends. So, we forget about her. I leave this article left wondering where we put her life and her work. When we comb through history and give it names and stars, it seems as if we’re doomed to forget radicals that were too radical. What do we do with 3rd wave feminists who fought for justice before the 2nd wave had even begun?

Body Politics

by Breana Beaudreault 0 Comments

As I read the pieces from last week in juxtaposition with the articles for this week, the theme of physicality and its instrumental nature in forging communities, keeping those communities safe and healthy, and allowing transcendental expression becomes increasingly apparent. Natalie Havlin’s article really solidified these themes that had echoed throughout other pieces in her work on the revolutionary possibilities of love in third world feminism. The feeling of physical touch and the gauging of emotions to determine revolutionary change are both to this day undervalued in their importance to the movements that fight against the newer iterations of these challenges. With the rise in popularity of self-care, it is important, I think, to recall that though this work is often exhausting and does require special attention to mental and physical wellbeing, that acts of communal love and care within chosen radical communities, real radical, unrestrained, and intersectional love can be just as healing. Just as Shange moves towards the ends of her rainbow with communal healing from the laying on of hands, these moments of collective healing can be found in the every day as Havlin suggests, and supplements self-care in a crucial way. Through these healing actions, also, we strengthen the community and renew energy for the cause in recognizing and embracing differences that define us as well as the similarities that allow transcendental understanding of struggle. The success of this physical re-imagining of love is twofold, in that the stereotypes that are inscribed on these bodies, and specifically the black female body in the works of Shange, can be re-written. Havlin notes, “Martinez’s differentiation of Cuban and African American corporeal and emotional expressions compliments her emphasis on the local historical specificity of antiblack racism.” This sentiment brought to mind Sullivan’s essay on the way that Shange’s work aids us in this mission as well, as she notes, “choreopoetic thinking offers pathways for speaking oneself out of social structures that constrain the voice through willful misreadings of the body.” Sullivan goes on to note “Shange’s innovation of the choreopoem offers such a form, a poetic form and mode of expression designed explicitly to represent the complexities of intersectional identity.” Just in the ways that physical love and expression demonstrates “the physical and emotional expression of the potential of collectivity”, Shange’s works, specifically her choreopoem, uses this exact theory of radical collective love, both physical and metaphysical, to carry us to the ends of our very inclusive, every color under the sun, bright, shinin’ rainbow.

The more I read, the more I doubt

by Jennell Strong 3 Comments

Every time that I read some text or work about history my most visceral response is this doesn’t make sense. The things that I am reading about, usually some ideological system implemented for the purpose of oppression (sexism, racism, queerphobia, etc) strikes me as being utterly illogical, irrational and unnecessary. Maybe I’m just too lazy and uncreative that I can’t fathom investing time and energy into making up ideas and forcing people to believe that just because. I say all this because that was my reaction when reading Becky Thompson’s work on Multirracial Feminism. She writes there is a widely held belief that “women of color feminists emerged in reaction to (and therefore later than) white feminism (338). This belief she attributes to hegemonic feminism telling a specific, narrow story about feminism. My response was there is enough evidence to effortlessly debunk this myth of a white, middle class feminist origin. Furthermore, common sense tells me that white people can’t do anything independently (I mean slavery) so why would I believe that white women could pioneer any liberation movement? Just makes no sense.

I have to constantly remind myself that people choose to not think practically. Hegemony functions within a collectively agreed upon state of impracticality. If you claim to want to free all women why wouldn’t you include all women? If you know that different feminisms coexisted why would you deliberately ignore those histories? I feel these are very basic questions. Most time I need to take breaks from reading discourse of any theoretical or historical nature because at the very foundation of it all is nonsense.

This text motivates me to learn more about feminisms of other cultures and time periods. I feel like there is so much about the social issues and activism of non black and non white women and non US women! Does that mean I am influenced by hegemonic feminism?

A key point I found in the text is that not only must the personal be political, but the political must also be personal (347). In the age of “I am (insert identities)” it’s easy to focus on what impacts you as an individual. However, freedom isn’t an individual state of being. Everyone must be free for freedom to be. Therefore, it’s necessary to think about another’s suffering and to ride for their causes as well. It’s just what makes sense.