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

the girl-child: finding a way to have/ her life

by Danielle 1 Comment

At first glance, I read “is not so gd” as “g-o-d” vs. “g-o-o-d”. I wonder if the abbreviation is supposed to make us think of god/ the idea of god at all. Does god exist from the moment a girl is born? Or is god a kind of love women must find within themselves? I thought about these questions as I read “is not so gd to be born a girl” closely.

For the first time, I read the slashes as the word “slash”. The imagery of violence in this choreoessay is more potent than any other I’ve read thus far that verbalizing the word “slash” felt relevant. Shange’s pen feels visceral—the slashes like machetes—carving a rhythm of violent protest. Her word choice—abominable, cutting, glass, scissors—conjure images of a war on the “girl-child”.

at least women cd carry things & cook/ but to be born a girl is not good sometimes

At the start, Shange makes a striking comparison between women and girls. Women can “carry things” (they have physical strength) and “cook” (they know how to care for/sustain themselves), while girls cannot; they are old enough to be taken advantage of but too young to fathom how to carry the weight of their experiences. Instead of writing “sex” and/or “rape”, Shange chooses the juvenile “you know what” to invoke a child’s perspective; it can be difficult for a girl/child to imagine a concept too mature for her age even if she has experienced it.

As violent as the choreoessay is, Shange does not sensationalize the physical threats of being born a girl. She defines words, like ‘infibulation’, and works out an equation, “virginity insurance = infibulation” to be matter-of-fact about the reality. Scientific descriptions of the way female genitals are maimed feel akin in tone to ingredients/ steps in a recipe, a recipe for a “girl-child” born to have the ‘child’ murdered. Her delivery is raw and compact. The paragraphs are long, and without any blank spaces Shange sometimes crafts; only the last few lines relieve some space.

we are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives/ to

live our lives/

to have/

our lives/

to live.

We’ve talked a lot in class about how her work often finds magic in the mundane. In this choreoessay, I’m curious whether the structure suggests that the mundane can also be suffocating and painful for a “girl-child” who has no control. Hope seems to live in the future of womanhood  (“we are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives”), a time when girls will have grown able to respond to the threat of their destinies. I’m struck by the slash between “to have” and “our lives”. I think back to Shange’s title/phrase “my pen is a machete”. My interpretation of the ending is that women have the tool to write the connection between having/owning their own lives.

Some questions I still have…in the choreoessay, Shange writes “for some of us & we go crazy/ or never go anyplace”…is crazy juxtaposed with anyplace? Can crazy be a place a person goes to? What does it mean to go crazy?

gd to be born

by Kiani 1 Comment

TW: mention of body mutilation and rape

Over and over we’ve praised Shange for uplifting us a la “I found god in myself & I loved her/ i loved her fiercely” but not enough for staring danger in the face and saying its name. Shange’s piece is not so gd to be born a girl confronts the emotional and physical violence done to women by the world. In The Black Sexism Debate Ntozake Shange writes,

clitorectomies, rape, & incest/ are irrevocable life-deniers/ life-stranglers & disrespectful of natural elements/ i wish these things wdnt happen anywhere anymore/ then i cd say it waz gd to be born a girl everywhere/ even though gender is not destiny/ 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 birthright/ to live freely with passion, knowing no fear/ that our species waz somehow incorrect.

This passage allows us to interact with the good and bad genesis of the works we’ve been engaging with this semester. It’s interesting that this hard subject matter is treated in the same way as luxurious baths, or cooking greens, or happenings outside of a window. They are treated as matter-of-fact.  We stare at the painful words on the screen and swallow hard as we consider their implications. It’s not pretty and it’s not warming. It’s sobering in its cry. Shange doesn’t ask us to confront the truth for truth’s sake, though. She asks us to confront it in confidence that we will use it to heal. To understand what is wrong and what is right.

The piece ends indicative of Shange’s decision to recognize the pain in growth and healing,

we are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives/ to
live our lives/
to have/
our lives
to live.

The usage of language, specifically gendered language, is interesting in considering people of trans, gender non-conforming, and queer identities feeling seen by this piece. I chose to leave “a girl” out of the title as I am grappling with the implications of the word in a natal context. I wonder, what does it mean to be born a girl? And to live out that girlhood?

 

nia ashley in reflection

by Nia 0 Comments

In my posts I tend to close read Shange’s text to extract themes about the citizens of the African diaspora. I pick up to three themes present in the text we read that week and combine Shange’s text with my own interpretations and opinions of those topics. I’ve raised the issue of the imbalanced politics in interracial intimacy and how its perceived, the importance of poets as orators in the African diaspora, and how Shange “reconstructs language and culture to allow colonized and oppressed people, particularly Black people, to express emotions, discuss experiences, and commiserate with others.” As the semester has progressed, I’ve gotten freer with my forms, more willing to digress from the straight analytical form and embrace more of Shange’s poetics. The one thing I do want to revisit in my work is actually not in my posts, but in my “nappy edges” presentation. I feel that I raised some ideas about the projects and goals of Shange’s work that are worth revisiting and exploring.

I often struggle to write a post on the days that I did not fully connect with the text, especially before class. Reading Shange in my isolation I am often confused or conflicted, I don’t know what to think, what I think, or how to articulate it. It is only after class that I begin to understand the text and developed concrete and coherent thoughts about the work. I think that is visible in the posts I did for texts I did not connect with as strongly as others.

poet as orator/performer/activist; poetry as translation

by Nia 2 Comments

Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography

mozambique
angola
salvador & johannesburg
the atlantic side of nicaragua costa rica
cuba puerto rico
charleston & savannah/ haiti
panama canal/ the yucatan
manila
la habana
guyana
santiago & brixton
near managua/
pétionville
abidjan
chicago
trinidad
san juan
capetown & palestine
luanda
chicago

These are all the places Shange connects alludes to in “Bocas” in A Daughter’s Geography. She names them as her numerous children related though they “cannot speak/the same language.” (Shange). She connects all the children of Africa and the African diaspora through experience not just through heritage. There is the simple explanation for these relationships; the one often invoked by artists and academics alike: that each ethnicity is just a stop on the trade route. Mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons became Basian, Jamaican, American, and Cuban through trade and bartering. They developed new cultures and claimed happenstance for their own.

“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” (Shange)

Shange goes farther than this connection. She unites these ethnicities and nationalities through their experiences of oppression and subjugation at the hands of similar if not the same groups of oppressors.

“but we fight the same old men/ in the new world… the same men who thought the earth waz flat
go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men”

She credits the experience of being marginalized and overcoming that marginalization as a uniting force of these colored people. The rhythms that emerged, the patios that formed, the food, the names, all point to a common experience. It is no surprise then that she had to make language move. When it moves, no matter what language it is, poems can capture, unite, and uplift her children. It doesn’t matter that one speaks Spanish, the other Portuguese; they use the movement in the poem, the space between the words, the history behind their creation to unite themselves as family.

I added some of my favorite spoken word poets from all over the diaspora.

http://operationelevation.tumblr.com/post/128567513644/bnv15

reviving and reactivating

by Kiani 1 Comment

In pondering the influence and impact of the Black Arts Movement on young writers across the United States– the magazines, writing collectives, newspapers and newsletters that were born of the movement, I can’t help but recall something Ntozake Shange mentioned about her own writing process. She talked about about how there was a period in her life when she could only write poems when she was in love — that her process existed in her relationships with lovers. Her process didn’t change until she had her daughter– her experience of love and loving shifted from an external process to an internal process– the nurturing of one’s own creation. A nurturing that would come to include introducing her daughter to the world of art she helped to build and foster. While this intimate bit of her life may seem removed from one’s considerations about the spread of information, it is so indicative to me about the nature of art– creating and sharing. I become wholly aware of the constant shifting and mindfulness that is necessary in creating work of oneself with the intent that it will touch others.

I’ve spent some time considering last week’s rereading of ‘A Daughter’s Geography,’–comparing it to works like ‘for colored girls’ and ‘nappy edges,’ and considering the Black Arts Movement and Decolonization efforts of the time. What they all have have in common is Shange, herself, of course. Shange’s passion for telling stories and for hearing stories drove her across the country to engage with the creative process. In participating in her work and understanding the history of it we have revived the conversation and included ourselves. We have reactivated an archive, if you will.

 

We didn’t have time in class to flesh out a question I posed during my presentation that I think speaks to this idea of reactivating and re-visioning the “archive.” The question read:

The Black Arts Movement — collectives, publications, aesthetic tradition, the prioritizing of the Black experience — spread across the country over the course of ten years when prominent figures Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange and others migrated to the West Coast to teach, perform, and create.

How would we envision such an exchange today considering the possibilities of technology? Could we compare this spread of information to movements today, or not?

I can’t help but giggle because this act that I’m performing right now — contributing knowledge to a blog; an online platform for sharing with others, is almost an answer to my question. I consider current movements that have been born of the Internet, or gained considerable following via the Internet, that have garnered worldwide attention– Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Occupy, etc. and wonder if they are comparable to something like the Black Arts Movement– I wonder if we’re writing ourselves into “history books” so to say. And further ponder what that even means… If we are to change conceptions of an archive by understanding its carceral origins can’t we also re conceptualize how we create history by engaging with history.. in the fullest way?

http://marcheleann.tumblr.com/post/124886605809/do-not-let-these-names-be-swept-under-the-rug

Grappling with the “Postcolonial”

by Nadia 0 Comments

 

My Africana courses this semester have forced me to grapple with the term “postcolonial.” I have learned that this word is fraught because it describes a time period or phenomena which is defined or continues to be influenced by the traumas of colonialism.The Black World Editor’s Note summarizes this point well: “black people on both sides of the continent have very similar problems and a common source: that of colonialism and enslavement” (SOS 207). Even after countries have received independence, they still hold the burden of dealing with the effects of colonialism and, in many cases, watch a new breed, namely, neocolonialism, evolve.

Artists and writers have dealt with contemporary issues affected by colonialism in their work. In “To Make a Poet Black” Michelle Joan Wilkinson states, “the 1960s generation of Black Arts poets imagined themselves as black magicians making black poems in and for a black world” and “the new slogans included “art for people’s sake,” “art for survival,” and even “art for the revolution.” However, this type of activism through art does not only apply to the black community. Instead of allowing the postcolonial to be a divisive agent that separates people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds from each other, writers like Ntozake Shange (African American) and Victor Hernandez Cruz (Puerto Rican) display “diasporic consciousness and cross-cultural poetics” in their work, terms Ron Hernadez used to describe publications like Umbra magazine (Latin Soul 334).

Shange demonstrates her solidarity with those of the diaspora in Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography as a result of a shared colonial past:

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

 

In a similar way, Cruz’s writing reflects  “a poetics of tensions between Spanish/English, rural/urban, and vernacular/literary cultures” (Latin Soul 335). This poem La Lupe illustrates the connection between Cuba and New York:

 

She embodied in gowns, capes,

dresses, necklaces, bonnets,

Velvets, suedes, diamond-studded,

flowers, sequins,

All through which

she wanted to eat herself

She salvaged us all,

but took the radiation.

Each time she sang

she crossed the sea.

From the Bronx

she went back to Cuba,

Adrift on the sails

of a song.

 

 

On to the Schomburg! #BlackArchives

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

I hope everyone is having a bit of a breather this long weekend.   Our next class meets at the Schomburg Center for African-American Culture to introduce you to the wealth of resources at the Schomburg and continue the discussion of archival practice Shannon started with us during Ntozake’s visit.  I’d like us to follow the plan for the original visit, which was to read around in the “Black Sexism” special issue of The Black Scholar.  You don’t have to read it from cover to cover, but certainly look at enough to get a sense of the nature of the controversy in its time. Tiana wrote a blogpost on the Black Sexism debate when we were supposed to have visited the Schomburg in October. You can find both a link and full PDF on Courseworks.

We are extremely fortunate to have Steven G. Fullwood, Assistant Curator for the Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, as our collaborator and archival guide.  Steven has vast experience in acquiring, managing and promoting the use of archives from groups whose lives can escape the radar of traditional archival practice. Under his stewardship, the Schomburg has developed a robust “In the Life Archive” which acquires and preserves historical materials created by and about queer life of people of African descent.  He is most recently co-editor of the anthology, Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call, which is a finalist for a Lambda literary award. You can read an interview with Steven here.  Steve suggests looking at a 1989 episode of the Phil Donohue show on Black Women Writers featuring Ntozake, Maya Angelou, Angela Davis and Alice Walker– a rare moment of mainstream media attention to Black women intellectuals that shows how visceral the debate was years after for colored girls . . .

Obviously, Ntozake Shange’s main archive is here at Barnard (yeay!), but Steven will introduce us to other collections related to topics/people we have covered in class, such as the Michelle Wallace,  Larry Neal and Umbra collections.

The Schomburg is on Malcolm X at 135th street (across from Harlem Hospital)

515 Malcolm X Blvd, New York, NY 10037.  The closest transportation is 2/3 and M7 bus. From campus, you can also take the M60 to Malcolm X and walk uptown,

I know it’s off the beaten path for switching classes, but please do everything you can to get there on time.  I am going early, but if there is a group going together, the College will have a metrocard for you to share, so let me know.

For some reason, images aren’t uploading, so I will update later.

Questioning Binaries: Latin-Soul Music

by Nicole 1 Comment

In Rod Hernandez’s “Latin Soul,” he writes that the recognition of similarities in music between black and latino people has helped bring to light the crossings of their two cultures. The “shared musical sensibilities” of their music was heard most often in neighborhoods where black Americans and latinos shared similar disenfranchised spaces, such as in the South Bronx of New York City (335). Hernandez explains that the “varied musical traditions of the African diaspora were instrumental in bringing about greater awareness of blackness and brownness,” (335). Knowledge of the cross over between black and latino cultures has been suppressed because of color prejudice, but the influence of African culture on all types of music of the diaspora is one place where the similarities in culture are more easily recognized.

This discussion of black and latino cultures and the similarities in their music reminded me of a movie I saw called Chef (2014), about a struggling chef who drives his food truck from Miami all the way back to his home in California. In the soundtrack for the movie latin music style is mixed with jazz and blues and reflects the stops the protagonist makes on his journey back to California. Traveling between these two locations with large latino populations, California and Miami, the protagonist surveys the South and the food and musical traditions which it holds. The movie focuses on the locations of Miami, New Orleans and Austin as the locus of the changes in music. The soundtrack to the movie reflects this fusion of black and latino culture. Some of the songs are originally sung by black artists but have been reworked in the style of salsa. When I saw the movie I thought the soundtrack was the best feature, and I could not think why I had never heard black and latino music combined in this way. In the text, Hernandez says that what “is amazing about well groomed Salsa musicians is their ability to play all styles of music;” this soundtrack is emblematic of this statement (335). When I listened to this soundtrack the same emotions churned in me as when I listen the jazz my grandparents used to play for me as a child.

 

 

 

new poem

by Ntozake Shange 0 Comments

1november 2015 “classic memories”

 

I danced with Nicolas Guillen under a Cuban sun

Prepared halal leg of lamb for c’ll.r.james on a brixton afyternoon

Shared chile relleno with the bEArdens on tenth avenue then

Was caught in the blackout at sardi’s dining on porterhouse stake &

Creamed spinach while Brooklyn burned and RicharD Long pontificated

Took photos of manuel  puig and mommy in a tango

Strolled  the Detroit museum of art with ricHMOnd barthe

 

Dined on red sauce baked chicken from leon damas near dupont circle

Sipped expresso with Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Miriam in their west London flat//flew the same airplane as  octavio paz &was in high

Margarita altitudes before I hit la zona rosa or plaza santa cECILIA

I Walzed like a jitterbug to max roach’s snare drum/ amidst bearden collages/

& sat my daughter on sun ra’s lap so she cd get a blessing from the black cosmic conductor / remembered cecil tayler’s shoulder tastes of

Champagne and cocaine ,/john biggers liked football I cdnt understand

These blessings came like b reathing /easily and without a plan

But the world was  lyrical & this ccollective genius so colored you cd smell em /like the star gazer lilies lester bowie brought to me

At the knitting factory  / this before he & malachi favors played

I live in music with me/these blessings c ame like

Magic moments the drifters sing abt/mystical nanoseconds of colored genius graced my life/I cdnt have ever made it up/

Is / too marvelous even for dreams

Fantastical beaux of my/ everyday

 

Ntozake shange c I November 2015

 

This is the second thing i have typed with my

very own fingers since

July 29 ,2011 when the neuropathy struck.

the first thing I typed was

a poem that just came to me when I woke up.

it felt easy likemyself again,

but lost the first draft on the i-pad

and tried  to write it long hand .

but my fingers cramped up so

i gave up til I had washed up and put on some make-up/

dressed

did some walking and hadda pepsi.

then I decided to try my computer

which was hooked up to dragon 13.

i am making a lot of mistakes /but bare with me/

I haven/t touched a computer either and now have no computer skills

that aren’t elementary I am tryin g to rrmember and learn At the same

Ttime.it is slow going but at least I have a chance of finding my voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My top five quotes from Shange’s works

by Renee Charlow 0 Comments

My top five quotes from Shange’s works

Peace 002

 

5) From Lost in Language and Sound

“now that i am writing abt my own work/ I am finally finding some use for the appraisals of strangers. One new york critic had accused me of being too self-conscious of being a writer/ the other from the midwest had asserted that I waz so involved with the deconstruction of the English language/ that my writing approached verbal gymnastics like unto a reverse minstrel show.”

 

I found this statement  very entertaining yet curious.  She admitted during one of our lunchtime visits, it was supposed to be an insult.   Verbal gymnastics like undo a reverse minstrel show.   What was he saying?  Was it difficult?   Did he find  the writing distracting?  Or was the work delightful?  I admire the audacity Ms. Shange demonstrates here.  She does not need the approval of strangers, theatre critics and others who come in contact wither work.   She is different; she is an enigma, she de/constructs the English language with her lower case writing, thought provoking dialogue and slashes… on purpose.  She breaks all the rules and is proud to do so.

 

#4 from Ellington was not a Street

our house was filled with all kinda folks

our windows were not cement or steel

our doors opened like our daddy’s arms

held us safe & loved

children growing in the company of men

old southern men & young slick ones

sonny til was not a boy

the clovers no rag-tag orphans

our crooners/we belonged to a whole world

nkrumah was no foreigner

virgil akins was not the only fighter

 

This poem reminds me of being an onlooker during an evening of luminaries during the Harlem Renaissance. In the book Ellington was not a Street, its told from the perspective of a young precocious girl, listening and learning.   The doors of her home were always open for visitors, and the home sounded like a place where people of color could frequent safely.  Ntozake shared with me that her father actually knew these luminaries.  You see, they would stay at her family home because they could not check into hotels.  Her father Dr. Paul T. Williams was the ring doctor for boxer Virgil Akins, he knew Duke Ellington because he loved music, he knew Sonny Til who was the lead singer for the Orioles , and her father attended Lincoln University with   Ghana Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah.  Now, isn’t that a global who’s who for the young Ntozake to find sitting at her dinner table.   These are memories she holds close to her heart and have molded and shaped her into the woman we admire today.

treble

#3 from loosening strings or give me an ‘A’

“yes/I listened to country joe and the fish/

yes/I howled with steppenwolf/

yes/fleetwood mac was my epiphany/

& creedance clearwater revival

swept me neath the waters/

hendrix my national anthem/always

yes blind lemon Jefferson & b.b. huddle

by my stage door/yes chuck berry lives next to me/

yes

eric clapton made me wanna have a child named layla/

yes

I selected this section of the poem because it allowed me to look at yet another side of this woman I know as Zake.  For me that represents that high energy rock and roll side of Ntozake, and picture her  during her young adult days.  This young wordsmith who was forging words into poetry, forging words into plays, was looking around  society,  living in her world, and making her observations her muse.   During those days I can image this quick talking, quick moving ,  pretty young woman, who hung out in coffee shops and wrote, hung out at rock concerts and wrote, and hung out at the Public Theatre and wrote.

 

#2 from Liliane

“But your girls have to realize the freedom you wage your most serious battle for is your very own mind.  No white man on this earth has the power or the right for that matter to control a single inch of your brain. Your minds, girls are the first battlefields for freedom.  You understand me.”

These were the words from S. Bliss Lincoln the mother of Liliane’s. She and her best friend Roxie were in  best friend from Biloxi Mississippi.  The girls and their families were hosting a Legal Defense Fund party/fundraiser.  These type groups were prominent in the deep South during the 1960’s long before the days of political Super Pacs.  Just as the fundraiser got into full swing, the party goers were paid an unexpected visit from the Klu Klux Klan.

 

 

#1-from For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf

“I fell into numbness

Till the only tree I cd see

Took me up in her branches

Held ,e in the breeze

Made me dawn dew

The chill at daybreak

The sun wrapped me up swinging rose light everywhere

The sky laid over me like a million men

I waz cold/I was burin up/ a child

& endlessly weaving garments from the moon

With my tears

I found God in myself and I loved her.  I loved her fiercely”

 

For many years I had a distant relationship with God.  As I grew up, I was force fed a steady diet of Christianity, white Jesus and how everything I said, watched and thought would eventually send me to Hell. I took what would be called today verbal and physical abuse because my parents were firm believers in that Bible passage “spare the rod, spoil the child.”   I remember one day in church a girl, who happened to be about 6 years older than me, was made to apologize to the church because she was an unwed mother. The boy who impregnated her was nowhere to be seen, but she was publically humiliated.   I was only 10 years old,  but even then I knew there has to be more to God than this.

About 8 years ago I found a spiritual home (Unity Churches) where all judgment about life is suspended, and all are welcomed with open arms.  As I attended the leadership classes and the membership classes I finally joined the church.  It was then experienced what this poem speaks of and I realized that I had found what I had been looking for so diligently for my entire life…. God in myself.

Unity-CoP-Logo (1)