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

Archive Find 2: McIntyre’s Choreodrama

by Nicole 1 Comment

During my visit to the New York Public Library of Performing Arts, I looked at programs from the Sounds in Motion company. One of the more interesting programs was from an adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.

FullSizeRender
CAPTION: “Program from May 1987 interpretation of Their Eyes Were Watching God with choreography by Dianne McIntyre: This program is important because it shows how dance and literature can be combined to create a unique experience for the audience. For this performance, McIntyre also collaborated with The Okra Orchestra. In this performance, McIntyre did not only honor Zora Neale Hurston’s literature but also Southern black culture through a celebration of the blues. This performance recognized an experience that was particular to black culture.”

Edits in the Margins: Archive Find of the Week #2

by Clarke 0 Comments

First draft of “A Week-end in Austin/A Poet, the People, & the KKK” – dated 21 February 1983; labelled “not proofread” and “express property of Village Voice…”.

Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 6.14.16 PMScreen Shot 2016-04-04 at 6.14.49 PM Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 6.14.33 PM

I am interested in evidence of Shange’s self-revision and growth in her papers. Much of her archived work includes edits in the margins–notes, highlights, scratches, and communication with editors and readers. These images represent just some of the many edits and revisions in the Shange Papers, and point to just a few examples of her growth as an artist. In particular, she seems to be focused on including more italics here, which may point to themes or language she is hoping to emphasize in this piece, or more broadly at this time in her artistic development.

archive find #2: “with no immediate cause” in Heresies 1979

by Sophia 0 Comments

Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 11.48.53 AM

This week I found a pretty late addition to my bibliography: Heresies, a feminist journal on art and politics based out of New York. I can’t confidently speak to why it wasn’t on my radar before now, but throughout my research, I’ve tried to focus on unearthing journals by black women rather than just pulling up more prominently circulating mass-media about them, so it’s almost comforting that the latter had been sitting on the back burner. Talking about black feminisms in publications that were, most essentially, predominately by and for white feminists, is a contentious issue, which was concretized as I flipped through the Michele Wallace issue of Ms. for the first time. Heresies, though significantly less glossy and more “academic” in its nature, faces much the same issue.
So I was surprised to find Ntozake Shange’s “with no immediate cause” sitting boldly at the front of the first issue I looked through. With for colored girls having made her somewhat of a celebrity in all feminist circles quite recently, it’s not as though they were featuring undiscovered black writers, but they featured Shange all the same. It’s also nice that the black man pictured at the bottom looks just as upstanding as the white men that surround him, and that the ratio of white to black men was not proportioned to favor the latter. Where I did have problems with the piece, though, is the editorial/cartoon pairing that followed it, which can be seen below. It features, in two pages and many windows with a variety of characters, exclusively white women –implying, consciously or not, that black women are not subject to male violence, or, if they are, they are not the victims of foremost concern. This is especially problematic considering that a black man was shown amongst the portraits of the imagined abusers. The editorial piece is fairly straightforward and unexceptional –focusing on gender and largely silent on race– but in a special issue specifically focused on women and violence, I feel that it is the responsibility of intersectional feminists (i.e. all feminists) to vocalize the unique subjugation of women of color.

Screen Shot 2016-04-04 at 11.56.21 AMScreen Shot 2016-04-04 at 11.56.01 AM

Archive Find #2 : TWWA Gatherings

by Michelle 0 Comments

This second #Archivefind also comes from the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) papers found at the Sophia Smith College Archives.

IMG_5601IMG_5713IMG_5715

I have selected a few fliers that speak to one kind of work that these Third World Women and People’s collectives did in the 70’s, which is materializing these collective spaces and making visible their organizing. One of the fliers calls for a picnic and the other two are about organizing for International Women’s Day.

The TWWA states throughout its mission statement and organizational goals that of primary importance is ensuring that all meetings and events account for the children of the women and organizers that come out to these events; which meant setting up a Committee on Childcare and ensuring all events are child friendly or has a sister to watch the kids.

These organizers were also adamant about making these spaces and the knowledges and ideas that came out of these spaces to be accessible.

I am reading these priorities into these fliers to be able to imagine the spaces they created and shared. While we can never fully piece together their full story through the archives and materials they left behind, we can learn and take away elements that resonant with us. In envisioning the spaces I hope to create in the gatherings for my project, I will be drawing from these priorities and literally taking from these fliers to create a collaborative zine.

 

Reading Zake: Stories of Our Own

by Nicole 6 Comments

“as a poet in american theater/ i find most activity that takes place on our stages overwhelmingly shallow/ stilted & imitative,” (Lost in Language & Sound, 13). 

As an artist, what Shange wants to create is a moment/experience and not a product. Shange argues that the American theater tradition that many black artists emulate are not sufficient to reach black people. The American theater tradition “cannot function for those of us from this hemisphere,” (13). She says that this theater tradition comes from a “[E]uropean psychology” that cannot and is not meant to heal and nurture black individuals. She means that this form is not useful for black people because it does not convey their experiences.

Archive Find of the Week #2

by Kiani 1 Comment

Find: Handwritten edits for books; including handwritten text and taped quotes and phrases

Last week,  I happened upon folders and folders of handwritten edits and iterations of texts made by Ntozake Shange. I was struck by the sheer amount of paper utilized to refashion every edition of a text that she was working on. As I poured through the edits to make connections between the edits, I became fascinated by the aesthetic qualities of the documents I was beholding. Some pages of the edits were just lines and lines of elegant script and some pages began to take on the form of collages in that Shange had taped and fastened other bits of text onto the pages of her edits.

It was looking through these pages that I decided that I wanted to use the archival materials as the aesthetic base of my final project. The pages and pages of elegant script were evocative– some were water stained such that the text ran almost like water color. Others felt very full with there collaged quotes and phrases. Further, it was exciting to perceive something new about the pages every time I looked at them– from the color and texture of the paper to the actual words being evoked upon the page.

dream fragments/ darling-honey-child/ dearest daddy [Archive Find]

by Melissa 1 Comment

 

before starting her blood, she tends to break glass. she is washing dishes. there is a crisp sound of shattering glass. a shard will have found itself lodged in the flesh of her palm. crimson will trickle into the sink.

that night she dreams of water roaring evenly from glistening faucets of silver on every wall. fragments of bright light float across her body. brilliant flashes that spread across her flesh. crystallized patterns etch themselves on her skin. she holds a brown baby to her breast as she lays in a tub filled with clear, sweet smelling water. “darling, honey child”. in whispered incantations, she conjures protective shields. the child that feeds from her body, peers at her with soft, brown eyes. wet with love. there is warmth all over. as they are lulled in this gently moving water.

this is the spirit of Yemayá come to visit.

Dreams. We must tune in closely to the bits of news they bring us. They carry messages from the spirit realm. Grandmother has sent news. That her darling-honey-child must survive. Shange, a witch who, in her flesh, carries the spirits of mothers from centuries past, knows this. It must be the reason she noted  her dreams. Black women divine destinies and access the memories of our past selves through dreams. We know sleep isn’t only for resting. Our work begins with the darkness that descends upon our consciousness. We fashion our vulnerable bodies into altars. Sacred sites of divination. In our most humble state of peace, the spirits come. They bring us news. This darling-honey-child must survive.

Red-Gold Journal copy

i once asked my father/ in a childishly flippant manner/ about his mother/ where she was and/ why she’d never been to visit/ he looked at me/ with a great well of/ sorrow in his eyes/ and told me/ he was an orphan/ since then/ the helpless gesture he made/ has come to encompass the meaning of orphan/ palms facing upward/ in supplication/ or desperation/ or accusation/ gesturing to the gods/ as if to say/ they are the architects of this sorrow/ and they are the source of my solace/ and they hold all clarity/ and carry all understanding in/ the matter of pain/ in that moment/ i knew what god was/ and what loss was/ my father/ in his lumbering frame/ crisscrossing lines around his eyes/ evidence/ of an untethered inclination/ towards joy/ his booming joviality/ eclipsed/ i feared that i had killed my father/ with this utterance/ that i had caused him to drown/ in this sorrow/ that i had no name for/ and i wanted to know the woman who/ had been responsible for raising a boy/ who would carry authority/ in the aristocratic flare of his nostrils/ and i wanted to know how/ she had nurtured him to such a state of tenderness/ and i saw her pass/ underneath the warmth of his brown eyes/

In a series of intimate and heartfelt letters to her father, some in the postpartum tense, Shange expresses and explores conflicting sentiments of guilt, shame, loss, and deep sorrow. In these stream of consciousness addresses, I likened Shange’s voice with that of her deeply troubled and talented Liliane, whose traumatic encounters with the pain inflicted by sexist, racist, and patriarchal forces are explored through a psychodynamic lens. We see Liliane as a proud Black girl, and as we join her in the vast and lonely landscape of her youth, we too become the wounded Black girl who must contend with the raw and grotesque humanity of imperfect fathers, broken mothers, dead sisters, and the lovers who took their lives.

 

Reading Zake: “A Scarlet Woman”

by Michelle 10 Comments

For the past few months, I have been going through the works of Third World Women and Peoples collectives from the 70s and this journey began with learning that Ntozake Shange contributed to the first anthology by Third World Women. Titled “Third World Women,” it was published by the collective, Third World Communications in 1972. The editors preface, “We recognize the necessity for Third World people to have accessible to them material written by and for them – we must be able to see, hear, feel, smell, taste portraits of ourselves”. With this mission in mind, Shange submits this poem, “A Scarlet Woman” to the anthology, and at first read, I loved it in the same ways that I loved her poem “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” (A Daughter’s Geography).