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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

A Recipe & Letter of Love

by Danielle 1 Comment

This was my second time reading Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. I looked more delicately at the recipes woven throughout the story. They are the yarn through which Hilda Effania/Mama stays connected to her daughters after they leaver her house. With the first line of the novel in mind (“When there is a woman, there is magic”), I think, especially as a child, there is a magic in motherhood. Mama knows how to heal wounds and almost always has advice that reassures. But as her daughters grow older and leave the nest, Mama finds that some of her advice seems to have staled (though, not for a lack of trying) in reaching the new lifestyles her daughters are living on their own. At moments when Sassafrass & Cypress are more distant from their mama’s hopes for their future/livelihood/womanhood, they find comfort and connection in her recipes.

Cypress has a recipe—My Mama & Her Mama ‘Fore Her: Codfish Cakes (Accra). The ingredients have immortalized over time, bridging the connection and comfort of generations; Mama’s recipes are magic that transcend time and space. Cypress is across the country from her home but—through cooking—in dialogue with the love of her maternal roots.

Mama’s Kwanza Recipe (for Sassafrass): Duck with Mixed Oyster Stuffing

1 duck, 5-7 pounds, cleaned & seasoned                        1 medium onion, chopped

1 pan cornbread                                                                   1 teaspoon paprika

2 tablespoons butter                                                           1 ground red pepper pod

1/2 cup celery, chopped                                                      1 dozen oysters (medium)

Salt & fine black pepper to taste                                       1 cup pecans, chopped

Wet the cornbread, break into bits and fry in the butter with the celery and onion. Add seasonings. As mixture gets crisp, add oysters & pecans. Stuff your duck & bake in a 450° oven for 15 minutes, then lower to 350° and bake 15 minutes for each pound. Baste every 15 minutes. Don’t forget to cover the bottoms of the pan with water, and be sure to keep the duck tightly covered until the last 15 minutes, when the skin can be brown.

 

Mama is pained that Sassafrass trades in Christmas for Kwanza (“When you said you weren’t having Christmas, I kept wondering where I had failed”), but she sends a recipe for her daughter’s holiday feast. Mama’s love and recipe from home transcends distance, and takes a seat at her daughter’s table. It’s her way of participating in her daughter’s life without physically being there. The recipe name (“Kwanza” replaces “Christmas”) Mama coins speaks to how recipes are like letters constantly in dialogue; they are conversations not fixed, but alive and shaped by the artists of each generation.

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Throughout reading the novel, I listened to Martha Reeves & The Vandellas album Dancing in the Street, and I thought I’d share my favorite song!

photo/audio essays on Santería and Gullah/Geechee culture

by Sophia 3 Comments

Audio: Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santería
produced by Olavo Alén Rodríguez (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1995), 1 hour

On Contemporary Cuban Practice of Santería
Photographed and captioned by Phil Clarke Hill

 

Shadows of the Gullah Geechee
Photographed by Pete Marovich
Captioned by Jordan G. Teicher

Outsiders: Uncle John’s Wisdom

by Nicole 2 Comments

“Them whites what owned slaves took everythin’ was ourselves & didn’t even keep it fo’ they own selves. Just threw it on away, ya heah. Took the drums what they could, but they couldn’t take our feet. Took them languages what we speak…But the fiddle was the talkin’ one. The fiddle be callin’ our gods what left us/be givin’ back some devilment & hope in our bodies worn down & lonely over these fields & kitchens. Why white folks so dumb, they was thinkin’ that if we didn’t have nothin’ of our own, they could come controllin’, meddlin’, whippin’ our sense on outta us. But the Colored smart, ya see. The Colored got some wits to em, you & me, we ain’t the onliest ones be talkin’ wit the unreal. What ya think music is, whatchu think the blues be, & them get happy church musics is about, but talkin’ with the unreal what’s mo’ real than most folks ever gonna know.”

(Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, pg. 22-23).

I find that often in literature the people who are outcasts and considered outside of society’s bounds are the most insightful. It is interesting that Indigo has the most thoughtful and honest conversation with an adult who is somewhat outside of the community because he is eccentric and lives outdoors. Uncle John is able to speak freely to Indigo despite her age because he separated from normal society. He is honest with Indigo about what it means that black people must take advantage of other modes of communication and expression. Indigo’s mother adores her and does her best to protect her but she wants to shelter her child instead of providing her with the necessary truths to prepare her for black womanhood. Not treating Indigo like a young adult is her mother’s way of protecting her and being a good parent. Unlike her mother, Uncle John does not feel the need to shelter Indigo. Uncle John is characterized as being “off” and does not subscribe to the unwritten rules of keeping children naive, so he sees no fault in educating Indigo on the history of her people.

The presence of white people in this passage, and in this book as a whole, is extremely different from the Shange works that we have read so far. In for colored girls, white people are not present nor seem to be of much importance. Of course, the systems that oppress the black women in the choreopoem are sometimes the result of a white presence, but in her manual for young black women how to deal with a white presence is not the goal. Instead she focuses on the relationships of black women with black men, other black women and self exploration. In Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo there is discussion about how black people must live their lives in response to the presence of white people around them. In this passage Uncle John schools Indigo on the mistakes slave masters maid when trying to subdue the spirits and cultures of black slaves. He does not conceal his contempt and disapproval of white people and their actions towards black people, in a way that we have yet not seen Shange of her characters refer to white people.

studying shange: student interviews

by Nia 1 Comment

In the next couple of weeks, I would like to explore how/why we are”studying shange.” Instead of talking about potential projects (which I am still open to do) we will discuss how students are experiencing this class and reading Shange with “carnal intellectuality” in mind. Students may group together to be interviewed (this is highly encouraged amongst students who read Shange together). The interviews will also attempt to incorporate Shange’s methods into the format. Be prepared to experiment.

Sign Up!

Original “studying shange” post

the slaves who were ourselves / the children who will have my dolls

by Michelle 2 Comments

Black girl magic is prevalent throughout sassafrass, cypress, & indigo in many different forms, perhaps the most straightforward are Indigo’s literal spells she writes for self-preservation and dream catching. She particularly draws on the power of her ancestor’s who were women.

When Indigo first started her menses, her mother sent her to the Pharmacy. In her mission to buy Kotex from the Pharmacy, Indigo experienced sexual violence by Mr. Lucas and had to quickly run home to engineer a spell that would rid herself of the evil.

TO RID ONESELF OF THE SCENT OF EVIL*

by Indigo

….

Take a piece of silk or cotton to which you feel attached & that bodes of happier times. Fill it with caraway seeds. Tie it with a ribbon that is your oldest female relative’s favorite color (30).

The ritual begins with repeating the offender’s name to bring the violent moment present, waving your arms and hands around you to clean the atmosphere, drawing a bath to cleanse yourself of the evilness, and ends with floating an object that is made from something that reminds you of happier times and of your oldest female relative. In the process of washing the evilness off, Indigo is also trying to draw in goodness for healing – for her, that is through channeling the happier times sentimental objects hold and perhaps some form of power or magic her oldest female relative has.

In addition to drawing on her oldest female relative, she also brings into the present (or connects the past with the present) her ancestors who were slaves. Twice she mentions, “the slaves who were ourselves”.

The first time she says this is when Indigo first joined the Junior Geechee Captains with Spats and Crunch. She rejected the idea of adopting a new name because she liked her name. She strongly identified with her name and liked that,

“The slaves who were ourselves knew all about indigo & Indigo herself” (40).

This is a beautiful sentence that seamlessly brings together the past and the present. In the first part of the sentence, “the slaves who were ourselves”, she plays with grammatical tenses in order to convey how slavery is both historical and present within her. She continues to draw on the presentness and history within her in the second part of the sentence, “knew all about indigo & Indigo herself”. She is making connections with the origins of her name, the indigo dye, a major plantation crop in South Carolina in the 18th century, and her present self, “Indigo”.

 

Indigo uses the phrase “the slaves who were ourselves” again just as she was about to submit herself to Mabel and Prettyman for disrespecting Mabel. She thinks to herself,

“The Caverns began to moan, not with sorrow but in recognition of Indigo’s revelation. The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness” (49).

In this moment, Indigo decides not to run away from Mabel and Prettyman and instead listen to her ancestors. She did not want to hurt Prettyman and Mabel; there were no malicious feelings between them, there was just a difference in interest between Indigo and Mabel and Prettyman. She realized this confusion through thinking about her ancestor’s confusions and thereby again, bridging the past and the present, paying homage to her ancestors who have done this before.

The first time Indigo thinks about younger generations rather than older generations is when she decides to put her dolls away in order to protect their youth. She decides that she would save the dolls for her daughters and her mother,

Hilda Effania couldn’t agree more with Indigo’s familial fervor. After all, she was devoted to her daughters. Now, Indigo, all of 12, was saving her more treasured possessions for the daughters to come (53).

In this scene, Hilda Effania is particularly proud that her daughter is already thinking about her own daughter in the future. This scene affirms the priorities and powers in passing things down intergenerationally. Shange includes a moment where the present is working towards passing down rather than just receiving from generations before.

As I was reading sassafrass, cypress, and indigo this past week, I was also catching up with the show, “Jane the Virgin”. Reading and watching this book and show side-by-side overwhelmed my heart with content on intergenerational love, mother-daughter relationships, support and love between women of color, etc. The show follows a grandmother, a mother, and a daughter working together to achieve their individual goals and overcome their individual problems. Jane (the daughter), just had a baby, and she problem solves heavily with her mother and grandmother on taking care of the child. In the scene below, Jane is delivering a Christening speech for her baby that was written by her grandmother and read during both her’s and her mother’s christenings.

“We Need To Talk About This Christening Speech From “Jane The Virgin””, Buzzfeed

“17 Times Jane the Virgin Filled Your Heart to the Brim”, Buzzfeed

Black Girls are Magic: Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo

by Nia 0 Comments

I’m never been more confident in identifying as a) witch b) blessed c) magical than I do after reading Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo. 

Black Girls are Magic.

Cooking, nurturing others is magic. Women gathering together is magical. Women loving and supporting each other is magical. Affirming oneself is magic. Loving yourself and respecting to be loved is rare and magnificent.

Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo represent three types of magic which pervade Black women’s lives.

Sassafras embodies creation. She finds her gift early. She’s a weaver. Yet, she lets private school and the influence of her lover, Mitch devalue the worth of her craft. The men in her life try to name her magic, the magic of Black women. They try to create the Black woman that they think Sassafras is in her, and for awhile she lets them with little, sporadic protest. She keeps trying to write, though it doesn’t come naturally. She keeps trying to be their idea of the artist, their idea of the Black women. But her writing continues to explore weaving, her mother and her past. Without knowing it, Sassafras uses her writing to bring herself back to weaving, back to stereotypically feminine creation. She shows that even performing the role society expects of you is magic if done by your own choice, if done freely. She can bring beauty, generosity, and freedom into the world because she chooses to. That is magical.

Cypress embodies translation and transconfiguration. Through her body Cypress is able to speak to the past, present, and future. She is able to interpret the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly of the body. She can read people through their bodies, take in their messages and send back her own. She is able to blend the things she wants in the world through her body. She is able to reconcile the things she wants in her life that she struggles to reconcile otherwise through dance and her body’s expression. When she accepts her body for all it can do and all it cannot, she is able to utilize her magic.

Indigo embodies birth and rebirth. For a very young age it is clear Indigo can conjure and create life where there is none. Her dolls, carefully and painstakingly fashioned by her, have personalities. When she believes she’s outgrown them she lays them “to rest.” Her violin playing revives the deepest, most ancestral parts of her listeners. It evokes the pain and joy of them and all who came before them. As she ages, she uses her powers to bring “free” Black  children into the world; children who come into the world unconquered and remain so until their deaths. Her magic is what keeps Black women afloat. She can call on the spirits to protect those who live and make women honors those who have passed. Her magic is regenerative.

Inter-generational Communion: On Mothering and Friendship

by Amanda 1 Comment

“I see the street play, the tap dance; I see the double Dutch stuff. It tells a story about how girls pass on skills to girls. You don’t learn double Dutch from your teachers or your parents, but you learn it from your girlfriends. And it’s about that kind of sharing and that trust and that passing along of information and wisdom and ability and excellence.” – Eva Yaa Asantewaa

sassafrass cypress indigo

Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982)

In talking about Camille A. Brown’s Black Girl: Linguistic Play—a show seeking to counter simplistic and overused portrayals of black female experiences in terms of strength and resilience by presenting black female experiences through nuanced understandings of play and protest, friendship and girlhood—Eva Yaa Asantewaa highlights the centrality of sharing to girlhood. I’ve included Brown’s work because it’s bewitchingly honest and glorious, and because I think it helps a great deal to connect mothering, the nature of black girl friendships, and ancestral inheritance—all themes that appear throughout Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.

Broadly, mothering is about nurturing, guiding, healing and cultivating gifts. While Aunt Haydee’s mothering manifests as teaching Indigo about “giving birth, curing women folks & their loved ones” and also making space for Indigo to play her fiddle, Indigo is seen mothering Aunt Haydee and others through storytelling (“Indigo told Aunt Haydee her own stories” 221), and soothing mothers and children with her fiddle. Not only are these acts reflections of motherhood, they also speak to the nature of friendship. You learn double dutch from your girlfriends. There’s a constant exchange between these women, these girls that ultimately conflates motherhood and friendship in a way that defines inter-generational communion.

“Aunt Haydee pleaded with Blue Sunday to ‘Please, give this child life, please, give this child the freedom you know.’ Then Indigo would play her fiddle, however the woman wanted” (223).

The above quote was extremely restorative and interesting in that although neither of these women//these girls are bearers of children; their participation alone in the process of bringing life into the world renders them mothers. Further, having the power to participate in the birth of people of color, and having the access to the history and thus the ability to call on ancestors for help is a gift. This moment where members of different generations (Blue Sunday, Aunt Haydee, Indigo, and the new child) come together becomes a recipe for ancestral inheritance. One that can look like playing double dutch, gaining the ability to move the sea, healing folks and their loved ones, and hands holding onto voices of slaves singing out of walls.

“The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness. Now they sang out from the walls, pulling Indigo toward them. Indigo ran her hands along the walls, to get the song, getta hold to the voices” (49).

 

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan)

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan). Found on camilleabrown.org

Black Girlhood in the Black Sexism Debate

by Clarke 1 Comment

Shange’s piece in The Black Sexism Debate “is not so gd to be born a girl,” makes me think of how black girlhood is described in slave narratives, particularly in Harriet Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”. Jacobs writes:

When they told me my new-born babe was a girl, my heart was heavier than it had ever been before. Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own. (119)

Jacobs writes that slavery is worse for black girls because of their added gender and sexual oppression. Notably, her messages about the sexual violence that enslaved black women and girls experience are written to appeal to white women abolitionist audiences. This is evident in the following passage, as she appeals to the sympathy of the white woman reader:

Pity me, and pardon me, O virtuous reader! You never knew what it is to be a slave; to be entirely unprotected by law or custom; to have the laws reduce you to the condition of a chattel, entirely subject to the will of another…Still, in looking back, calmly, on the events of my life, I feel that the slave woman ought not to be judged by the same standard as others. (86)

Jacobs is hesitant to reveal her lived experiences, so that even the introduction to her narrative is written to convince Northern white women to accept her story, despite its “indecorum.”

As we consider Shange’s unapologetic expression of the lived experiences of black women and girls in “The Black Sexism Debate,” it is important to consider the historical context of her appeal. Shange is writing  in 1978 to a different audience, but she is still in the position of highlighting the sexual violence black girls constantly face. Shange uses new language to describe this violence, language that Jacobs did not possess while writing her own narrative. However, their sentiments are fundamentally the same. Shange writes:

right now being born a girl is to be born threatened/ i dont respond well to threats/ i want being born a girl to be a cause for celebration/ cause for protection & nourishment of our birth-right/ to live freely with passion, knowing no fear/ that our species waz somehow incorrect.

& we are now plagued with rapists & clitorectomies. we pay for being born girls/ but we owe no one anything/ not our labia, not our clitoris, not our lives. we are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives/ to live our lives/

to have/

our lives/

to live.

In this passage, and throughout Shange’s work, she is responding to the historical legacy and trauma of black girl’s experiences with sexual violence, while naming her desires for black girlhood and black girl possibilities.

Shange says Dance! Shange says Write! Keep on pushing on

by Yemi 1 Comment

When Ntozake Shange came to class we had the privilege of the archivist, the scholar, and the creator all in one room. We had someone to guide us through the materials, we had the written work, we had our own motivation to learn, but most importantly we had the living spring, the touchstone to which we could understand, the body to which we could trace back years of experience and extrapolate an abundance of meaning. With this dynamic it seemed like we could solve all problems and address all nuances of the black experience that may have once slipped by us.

Ntozake Shange in front of Barnard gates (10/23/15)

Ntozake Shange in front of Barnard gates (10/23/15)

… (Reflections) … (continue) … (below) …

Much of Shange’s defiance of the Black Arts Movement was because it was for “macho males.” In a similar way she went to alternative dance teachers spaces and because she wanted to learn a dance “other than yoruba.” How did Shange choose which movements to be a part of? Which dance to dance? Was the nature of her defiance simply to move against the grain in every way? I had always wondered about the strategy of rejection and how refusal would effect politics and thus effect history. Shange answered my questions and unearthed the meaning behind her actions by explaining: “When you accept something/ don’t accept, it controls the historical narrative.”

Refusing the Black Arts Movement was a fight for women to not only be considered, but to be recognized as essential to the progress of any black agenda. Learning dances outside of Yoruba, meant that countries which fell outside the demarcations of West Africa could be represented in America and more importantly in the New World, which housed many nations and black aesthetics, that Shange was creating.

The purpose of arts, dance and writing, is to use individual creativity to get to a place where “we [the black collective] can restructure and reconstitute the universe” to be one that is inclusive of us. That is why Shange challenges African Americans to pick up another language, so we are not defaulting to the language of the oppressor. “When you take control of the language, you take control of your life.”

The Spyra piece describes Shange’s Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter and the way in which purposefully using language is an act of distancing one’s self from the historical narrative of slavery and the chains that identify the black body and black life as without form or distinction: “there’s no words for us (Spyra, 765).” In the same way that language breaks the historical narrative, so does dance. Though Shange distances herself from Yoruba dance because it only upholds one African cultural group, the fact that the dance appears in Black American culture is a victory. The distance between continent of origin and the diaspora is closing. The gap of okra and greens becomes tighter. The arts bridges continents and claims a trajectory of history that was stolen. In this video Shange defines black dance as “how we remember what cannot be said.”

We must always bury our dead twice – why we blog / archive / publish

by Michelle 2 Comments

In an interview with Steven Fullwood, Assistant Curator for the Schomburg Center’s Manuscripts, Acrhives, and Rare Books Division, Fullwood was asked about his latest book Black Gay Genius, an anthology of Joseph Beam’s Work.

Why is the observance of Joseph Beam’s life with an anthology important?

It is never up to mainstream culture to maintain or honor our dead; we must do that. I am specifically talking about black queer people. It is our duty. Joe Beam’s passion to learn, grow and provide an opportunity for others to speak their truths was inspired by the Black Power and Black Arts Movements. If you saw a need for something, you did it or you supported others that did. Beam identified the need and did that. Barbara Smith, writer, feminist, and co-founder of Kitchen Table Press, once wrote an essay about James Baldwin titled “We Must Always Bury Our Dead Twice,” which I took as a responsibility to make visible black queer life. In Black Gay Genius, Smith stated that “burying our dead twice, or three times or more means that we lift up their contributions, their legacy, their reputations and make them known in every way we possibly can” and I agree with her 100%.

This snippet pulled me to look into Barbara Smith’s tribute to James Baldwin. In “We Must Always Bury Our Dead Twice”, Smith describes her experience of attending Baldwin’s funeral on December 8th, 1987 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Baldwin’s existence as a powerful black gay writer had always been important. For Smith, “Baldwin’s homosexuality was also a hopeful sign. If nothing else, it indicated his capacity to radically nonconform, to carve out his own emotional freedom, lessons that I myself would need to learn” (Smith 76). To her disappointment, the many tributes offered to Baldwin, including words from Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, did not mention the significance of his homosexuality.

If all of who James Baldwin was had been mentioned at his funeral in New York City on December 8, 1987, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, it would have gone out on the wire services and been broadcast on the air all over the globe. Not only would this news have geometrically increased the quotient of truth available from the media that day in general, it also would have helped alter, if only by an increment, perceptions in Black communities all over the world about the meaning of homosexuality, communities where those of us who survive Baldwin as Black lesbians and gay men must continue to dwell (Smith 79- 80).

Smith’s call to bury our dead twice is to honor all of who James Baldwin was because the larger community did not. Reading Smith’s second burial of James Baldwin reminds me of the significance of the work we are doing in Kim Hall’s Worlds of Shange class. In this class, we are studying the works and worlds of Shange in order to most justly work with the materials in her archives. It is important that we are blogging, juxtaposing her work with other media, including what reading her poetry and novels invokes in us as her work serves so many people in so many different ways. For Smith, we must always bury our dead twice for the “communities where those of us who survive Baldwin as Black lesbians and gay men must continue to dwell”. This archival work contributes to discourses on the Black Arts Movement, The Black Power Movement, perceptions of black girls, spaces of women of color, etc. We must continue studying and publishing because there will be remakes of for colored girls that do not honor our truth.

In our work this year, I hope that we are “geometrically increasing the quotient of truth available” for black women, women of color, queer women of color, all readers.