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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Archives and Feminism

by Kim Hall 0 Comments
feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women, as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not feminism, but merely female self-aggrandizement.
— Barbara Smith (1979), qtd in Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism”
In fact, during the 1970s, women of color were involved on three fronts-working with white- dominated feminist groups; forming women’s caucuses in existing mixed-gender organizations; and developing autonomous Black, Latina, Native American, and Asian feminist organizations.
–Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism”
Phat Mama magazine cover art

Phat Mama magazine cover art

Thanks so much to  Jennell, Laura and Makaria for last week’s lively discussion!  Although Jennell had her own archival adventure at a street fair, we will begin our collective archival journey today.  We are visiting The Ntozake Shange Collection ON HER BIRTHDAY!!!!  (Don’t forget that we are meeting in the new archive space in Milstein–directions below).  In addition to Barnard librarians and archivists, Shannon O’Neill and Vani Natarajan, we will hear from Steven Fullwood, 

A New Vision of Feminism

by Ariel Leachman 1 Comment

Like in our discussion two weeks ago on “dismantling the patriarchy” it is not possible without the influences of masculinity and how the dominant cultural forces of patriarchy. There is a continual challenge to include all identities in In the same way there is a challenge for our understanding of feminism to capture all identities, as feminism in my view is a localized experience. The fight for “equality” for women is not only racially or socioeconomically specific; but it is also grounded in one’s own experience through culture, ethnicity and personal encounter with their identity as a woman or as other. However, our readings highlight an important effort in the theory of feminism and how it is important to consider the intersectional influences and effects. Without an intersectional lens movements cannot fully fight oppression. Racism for women of color cannot be separated from their gendered oppression.

From an artistic lens, I think that Shange captures this challenge of intersectionality. Her work, and the works of many racially diverse feminist artist draw parallels of the plight of black women and people of color; yet they are able to capture the distinct and unique experience of black women and women of color. One modern artist that I appreciate is Mickalene Thomas. Her art is a process of revisiting and recreating art centered and focused on black women.

 

 

 

There is no perfect feminism

by Phanesia Pharel 1 Comment

I truly believe there is no perfect feminism. But there are feminisms that uplift more people than others. I always viewed second wave feminism as belonging to white women, I knew women of color were ignored but I had no idea women of color also mobilized with white women at that point. Becky Thompsons, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism” & Natalie Havlin, bring up so many valuable points. Starting with the erasure of early intersectionality and how women of color would work together but always want individuality. This all reminds me of the connections in the Caribbean. Growing up in Miami it seemed like Cubans, Haitians and other Caribbean people thrived separately. It wasn’t until my mother told me about her experiences and the closeness between these islands that I realized we had more to gain working together. But the erasure of our interconnected histories held me back from many valuable conversations. Another example of erasure is the fact that I did not find our Shirley Chislom ran for president until a few years ago, and it pissed me off and blew my mind. Why the fudgenuts did I not learn this in school? And as great as it is that we talk about it sometimes many forget that the black community and the woman’s movement left her behind. I also had no idea she was the first congresswoman.

 

As many great points as Becky thompson’s work makes, this text seems a little too optimistic. Yay! Women of color and white Jewish, queer and anti-racist women mobilized together in the past. But why are our communities more polarized and segregated in some parts of America and the world than ever before? 

 

This brings me to Chicanx feminism. This is a great example as well, while her studies on Cuba were amazing, to note the oppression of afro-cubans is so immense that I grew up in Miami a city built by Cubans and Haitians and met an Afro-Cuban when I was 19 years old. The proof is in who survived and was able to escape Castro. Cuba is often romanticized as a communist heaven but it’s important to remember certain things. There were camps that queer people disappeared and were taken to under Fidel Castro. This was not mentioned in her work at all. Another example of the severity of Cuba is when my violin coach saw her cousins cry when they walked into a supermarket for the first time, they had never seen so much food. I don’t feel like an accurate or nonbiased portrayal of Cuba was made here.

 

I say all of this to ask if it is possible to tell the whole story of a silenced community?

There are ups and downs but what was erased and what stayed in feminism? This is something I’d love to discuss with all of you.

Haveline in Conversation with Shange and Lorde

by Katie Lee 2 Comments

The Havelin reading reminded me of our discussions from last week on for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and also Audre Lorde’s scholarship on anger in “The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”. Havelin’s concept of the revolutionary love-praxis involves both mutual affection and the commitment to revolutionary ethics, particularly through fostering understanding between women. Havelin expands upon the traditional conception of love as tenderness by also stating that the use and expression of love is a measure of revolutionary thought and action. This reminds me of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf because the choreopoem portrays communal emotional vulnerability, followed by loving acceptance. The women each reveal their story of survival and, in doing so, warmly accept each other. This feeling comes organically to them, and would fall under Havelin’s category of everyday feeling. I think that Havelin would argue that their acts are revolutionary, in that it creates a space wherein the experiences of women of color are heard and taken to heart, in opposition to the current white, patriarchal hegemony.

This also reminded me of Lorde’s work because she similarly describes a natural feeling as an act of revolution, except she identifies anger. Both Havelin and Lorde appreciate the power of the everyday. They both assert that refusing to dismiss and legitimizing these everyday feelings pushes up against the hegemonic belief that women should suppress their irrational, over-abundant emotions.

For my piece of media, I chose Kerry James Marshall’s “School of Beauty, School of Culture”, an acrylic and glitter work from 2013. Marshall harnesses the power of the everyday, that being a hair salon, to make assert of black culture as a legitimate form of culture, now taking its space in art institutions (like the Whitney, where this was shown). He also portrays black women communing with each other through care and closeness.

Here’s a link to a better photo: https://artsbma.org/may-2013-spotlight/sony-dsc/

Love and Emotion in Revolution

by Dayna Beatty 0 Comments

“Feelings of love are fundamental in revolutionary practice.” (Havlin 81)

 

Paired with each other, these readings seem to reach the same conclusion: for revolution to be inclusive and effective, love must be present. Love therefor leads to intersectionality—appreciation and recognition for everyone within a movement produces the most inclusive and thus, successful, activism possible. Both pieces call readers to acknowledge the hierarchical nature of humanity—both transnationally and within communities. Havlin writes, “Vasquez identifies self-awareness about power inequalities among colonized people as necessary components of building collaborations across social and national borders.” (Havlin 91) Essentially, she concludes that power dynamics are present not just between the colonizer and the colonized, but among the colonized as well. There is no society void of some form of hierarchy that is driven by different forms of oppression. Similarly, Thompson writes, “a recognition that race cannot be seen in binary terms; a recognition that racism exists in your backyard as well as in the countries the US is bombing or inhabiting economically.” (Thompson 349) Ideas about race produce stereotypes that are present not just among the dominant, western, white group but also among minority groups. Hierarchies do not simply exist between the dominant group and the “other”—to believe that this is the case when performing activism is a reductionist approach that makes it difficult to recognize other forms of oppression—be they race based or based upon something else.

 

Havlin’s piece calls readers to recognize the importance of love and emotion in activism. To recognize emotion in activism was an interesting analytical approach that, up until now, I had never considered. The texts I have read thus far have not stressed how important emotion it is, and I theorize that is due to the fact that feminists are hesitant to acknowledge their emotions out of fear of ratifying the stereotype that women are “emotion.” However, as stated earlier in the piece, love (an emotion) is necessary for revolution.  This idea also encompasses the need to recognize other forms of oppression alongside the feminist fight. As Thompson’s history of Second Wave Feminism exposes, effective and inclusive feminism is not simply limited to a woman versus man binary. It is recognizing that there many different forms of oppression and privilege that work together to form a person’s positionality. Thompson writes that it is necessary for a white woman to recognize her  “position as both oppressed and oppressor— as both women and white.” (Thompson 342) Ultimately, including love and emotion and recognizing hierarchies among even homogenous groups produces a “cross-racial sisterhood” that is “powerful.” (Thompson 347) Intersectionality includes gender and race, but also class, education, ability status, and hundreds more identifiers. In order to create a movement that offers the highest potential for success, activists must love and acknowledge all of these identifiers.

 

I chose to include the following video a TED talk given by one of the first women to coin the term “intersectional.” Whenever I explain intersectional feminism to people who’ve only been exposed to white feminism (as mentioned directly in Thompson’s piece), I refer them to this video. I felt the exercise she does at the very beginning of this piece in particular to be incredibly demonstrative of the dangers that activism which lacks an intersectional approach produces.

Lady in Orange on Healing

by Katie Lee 1 Comment

One of the parts of for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf that struck me most was the Lady in Orange’s poem describing her relationship with a man who continually cheats on her with his ex-lover. She vividly describes her pain, stating “you put my heart in the bottom of/ yr shoe”, describing the way this man has abused and disrespected her and their relationship. Shange complicates the narrative of the “woman scorned” in showing that Lady in Orange vacillates between caring for herself and describing her pain. On one hand, she is able to find her own joy in dancing, for example. She states that she does not “leave bitterness in somebody else’s cup”, including the “other woman” and eventually states that she has left “sorrow on the curb” for herself. Yet, at the same time, she seems to redirect the injury the “woman scorned” supposedly takes out on others onto herself, stating “I have died in a real way”, and is not satisfied by her new lover. Shange beautifully shows that healing is not a unidirectional process in any way. Healing requires an examination and acceptance of pain in addition to the strength to look past it, and the joy and sorrow of moving on are wrapped up in each other.

I truly have not seen a work that captures the many dimensions of healing as well as Shange, but I was reminded of Beyoncé’s “Pray You Catch Me”. In this song, Beyoncé focuses more on her attachment to her lover than in Shange’s work. However, the song does capture how her pain is rooted in a deep love, which continues her hope that he can and will return her prayers. This mirrors Shange’s description of the willingness to hold on to love and joy through suffering.

 

Nappy Edges & Identity

by Katie Lee 0 Comments

One of the themes Shange addresses in nappy edges is exercising her own narrative voice as a black woman. The first chapter of her collection is “things i wd say”. I interpreted Shange’s use of “wd say” as opposed to “am saying” or simply” “things I say” as her stating that these are things she would say given the opportunity and space that is kept from her. In putting the title in lowercase, Shange also draws attention to how her language as a writer has been diminished, and she attributes this to the development of a singular identity of black artists. In the formation of a singular narrative, the voices of individuals have been drowned out. A monolithic “language”, as stated in Juan Goytisolo’s quote, has homogenized individual experience and must be fought against if black women are to be heard. She goes on to describe the ways in which the works of black artists, musicians, poets, and writers have been inappropriately “boxed in” and flattened. She argues that until identities amongst artists are made distinct, “our spaces, language & therefore craft will not be nurtured consciously”. Therefore, black artists and their identities must be made distinct in order for their voices, their own voices, to be known and grown.

The media included above is Toyin Odutola’s  (Barnard’s resident artist!) “uncertain, yet reserved”. She says of her work “where some may see flat, static narratives, I see a spectrum of tonal gradations and realities”. Toyin’s work, similar to Shange’s, pushes against a singular narrative. Her entire quote is below.

“skin as geography is the terrain I expand by emphasizing the specificity of blackness, where an individual’s subjectivity, various realities and experiences can literally be drawn onto the diverse topography of the epidermis. from there, the possibilities of portraying a fully-fledged person are endless.” -Toyin Ojin Odutola

 

Modern Victimization in Violence

by Aissata Ba 0 Comments

lady in blue: a friend is hard to press charges against

lady in red: if you know him

you must have wanted it

lady in purple: a misunderstanding

lady in red: you know

these things happen

lady in blue: are you sure

you didnt suggest

lady in purple: had you been drinking

lady in red: a rapist is always to be a stranger

to be legitimate

someone you never saw

a man wit obvious problems

These few lines from Shange’s Latent Rapists’ stand alone without the need of further explanation. The talk about rapes and sexual misconducts against women are not new or unfamiliar, especially with the kind of society and current events surrounding us recently. What I find very interesting is the fact that the blame has not changed from the year For Colored Girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf was written and today. Women are still being blamed for being raped, being told that somehow it’s their fault for wearing suggestive clothings or walking alone, etc. Rape culture has continuously ignored who was doing the raping.

In this video, Trevor Noah talks about “president” Donald Trump’s usage of victimhood. Trump held a rally a couple of days ago in which he states that this is the worst time to be a men in America as any man would be easily accused of sexual violence or misconduct. When he was asked about the women in America, he said that women were doing great. Having a president who is as ignorant and misguided as Trump adds fuel to the battle women have been fighting their entire lives. He is a disrespectful and disgraceful man to human kind itself. We victimize those who deserve innocence while giving innocence to those who should be victimized. I can only wonder how Shange would revise or add on to Latent Rapists’ to reflect the increased intensity in the rape culture and sexual misconduct in our society.

for colored girls–heteronormativity and misconceptions surrounding sexual health

by Tirzah Anderson 1 Comment

Shange, highlights conceptions of heteronormativity and the perceived association of sexual health with sexuality in “for colored girl who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” through the discussion the women have about testing for sexually transmitted infections. In this conversation, Shange highlighted the stereotypes and assumptions that were prevalent surrounding HIV, especially in this time period when there was a lack of research surrounding STIs. It is particularly interesting to note that she highlights heteronormative ideas through a discussion between women, who she is thus implicating for contributing to a heteronormative system that perpetuates homophobic notions of masculinity, but she also shows the ways in which men, even gay men, may have contributed to patriarchal and heteronormative systems.

One woman suggested that another woman’s man had been cheating on her and said she specifically saw him at a gay bar with another man. They implied that because he was gay, she needed to get tested for “aids”, which she replied to with “i know you’re not suggesting he’s on the dl”. Shange illustrates the association many people create between HIV/Aids and gay men, specifically Black gay men. Further, she is confused and unsure about how she contracted HIV and how she will continue her life with HIV, signaling to the lack of knowledge surrounding HIV during this time. She asks “am I going to die?”, despite the fact that HIV’s symptoms are treatable. In this, Shange reflects a lack of understanding around HIV, that often led to misconceptions around how it was contracted and how it would affect relationships.

Additionally, it is important to note that when she finds out that she is HIV positive, she tells the man, who ultimately becomes aggressive and hits her. His own internalized homophobia and heteronormative ideas of manhood lead to his abuse of a woman. This is important to note, because Shange is showing that not only is the homophobia he is experiencing affecting his life, but it is also permeating throughout the community leading to a greater heteronormative system.

This conversation surrounding HIV/Aids is still highly relevant due to the ways that it continues to affect Black communities in different ways based on sex education and the misconceptions around it. Shange was highlighting the ways that it was perceived in many Black communities through this work. I have attached a video which highlights the current ways in which HIV/Aids is affecting Black communities.

When Sorry is Not Enuf

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

Of Ntozake’s pieces we’ve read so far, this one was my favorite. In particular, I loved the words of the character “Lady in Blue.” The first of her monologues, on page 12 was incredibly powerful. The words Ntozake chose, “puddle,” “waters,” “circlin,” “bleed,” all have a certain momentum to them that implies fluidity and movement. However, she also describes an encounter with someone who is verbally assaulting her on the street. This sort of interaction, one that is all too familiar for any woman that has walked the streets of New York at dark, is a powerful reminder of the constant pressure to submit. A daily call to behave a certain way and allow one’s self to become subject to another’s orders.

 

The idea of being trapped in the “six blocks of cruelty” that for this character is home was physically immobilizing. The “tunnel closing,” the closed doors, the sun not shining, all of these words that restrict space make readers feel as though they too are trapped within the mind of this character. The use of physically fluid language in the first monologue compared to the language in the second one are polar opposites. Ntozake goes from describing “a tunnel with a train” to a “tunnel closing,” a situation that includes mobility and one that does not. These two speeches by this character in proximity to each other produce an extra emphasis on the feelings of entrapment she describes.

 

Towards the end of one of the last monologues by the Lady In Blue, Ntozake writes about the concept of sorry. “I’m not even sorry/ bout you bein sorry you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna/ just don’t give it to me/ I can’t use another sorry.” This line was my favorite from this book. The burden on women to accept an apology for something that someone else did is not only indicative of the gendered climate we live in today, but also demonstrative of the unpaid mental labor that women are asked to do everyday. To accept an apology, to move on, to stop letting one event affect you for the rest of your life, to do the work to make someone else feel better about themselves.  With all the media coverage around sexual assault and a growing acceptance for vocalizing past experiences, this idea of “sorry” is prevalent. Along with the burden of reliving the trauma of sexual assault is the burden of accepting the “sorry” of someone else. Sorry is a word that does nothing for the survivor but only serves to alleviate the guilt of the aggressor.