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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Alvin Ailey, BAM and Shange

by Nicole 1 Comment

I am really interested in Alvin Ailey’s ballet, Revelations, which Shange mentions in “why I had to dance” in Lost in Language and Sound. Growing up it was a tradition between my mother and I to go see Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater each year around Christmas when they perform at City Center. My mother would always choose a performance date on which they would be performing Revelations. Even before I was able to understand the importance of the ballet, I was aware that something about this piece in particular was sacred to many black dancers and black people who enjoy dance.

deux “magots” or “maggots”?

by Michelle 1 Comment

In Éloge de la Créolité, Jean Bernabé, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Raphaël Confiant explains that, “‘Creoleness is not monolingual. Nor is it multilingualism divided into isolated compartments. Its field is language. Its appetite: all the languages of the world'”. They continue to explain how, “…the multilingualism of the poetics of Relation brings languages together without blending them, which is precisely what Shange does in A Daughter’s Geography; hence Glissant’s emphasis on creaolization as distinct from creoleness helps us to understand Shange’s shying away from actual New World creoles” (Spyra 789). I am interested in this idea of “bringing languages together without blending them” as we have been taught to think of America as a “melting pot”.

The Black Sexism Debate, interracial intimacy, and Black women’s agency

by Nia 2 Comments

It’s intriguing to see how different modern vitrol for bm/ww, bw/wm, bm/wm, and bw/ww even now when those relationships have agency on both sides. Because Black women were always accessible to yt men they are almost never seen as having the agency or the choice to date inter or intra racially. When a black men dates interracially there are two understandings of his choice. In the case of dating a yt woman, it is seen an affirmation of his masculinity to the detriment of his race. As Michelle Wallace elaborates subjugating the yt woman is seen as a symbol of ultimate masculinity. The betrayal is understood as an obviously advantageous position in which he’s put himself but on which he should not have attempted in order to stay loyal to his race. As Kayne West puts it, “ Stick by his side/you know the dude’s balling and yeah that’s right/but you keep calling and trying and you stay right girl/and when he get on he’ll leave yo ass for a white girl” (Goldigger). Wealth and power and a Doris Day to share it with. That’s the American dream. In the case of a Black man dating a yt man, his choice is seen as an assault on his masculinity, a elective castration, and an act to the detriment of his race and the national project. The Black Nationalist project is not queer. In the patriarchal construct of sex as domination over a lesser being for one’s own pleasure, Black men are subjugating themselves willingly, making them less than, and even worse to yt men. In a vast simplification of the politics of these relationships, the yt men who sleep with Black men are seen as acting out a power dynamic of which the movement is trying to strip them. I do not doubt that this is true in some cases, but the assumption still stands as overarching and all consuming.

Clay/Lula: A Shot by Shot Analysis

by Danielle 0 Comments

After watching the ending of Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman in class, I wanted to further explore Clay and Lula as symbols of black and white America. The following shot by shot analysis looks at the ways in which camera angles and mise en scène (everything in front of the camera) interact with the dialogue, and ultimately advance this duality…

A. “They’ll murder you, and have very rational explanations. Very much like your own.”

In his final speech, Clay warns Lula that the day will arrive when black America will turn to a forceful/violent response after centuries of being victims of murder. The silver/white appearing subway pole slices through the image in a jarring fashion. The way the pole intrudes on the image seems to undercut his message and foretell that he is Lula/white America’s next victim.

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Archives and poetry and dinner . . O my!

by Kim Hall 11 Comments

To prepare for Shange’s visit, you should read

  • Ntozake Shange, From Okra to Greens: A Different Kinda Love Story  in A Daughter’s Geography
  • Edouard Glissant, excerpts from Caribbean Discourse and A Poetics of Relation
  • SKIM Spyra, Ania. “Ntozake Shange’s Multilingual Poetics of Relation.” Contemporary Literature 54.4 (2013): 785–809.

In the comments, please put your questions and let me know if you will CANNOT stay for the dinner or the Friday session.

Here’s our schedule:

Thursday, 22 October–Sulzburger, North Tower

  • 4:10-6pm Session with Shannon Miller–this is a hands-on workshop using materials from the Ntozake Shange collection. (Ntozake will be in attendance)
  • 6:00-7:30 Dinner and conversation with Ntozake, From Okra to Greens (we are supplying water. If you want something livelier, bring it with you.)

Friday, 23 October–Barnard Hall 101 (BCRW conference room)

  • 10:00am – noon, Discussion with Ntozake Shange (coffee and doughnuts)
    • we’ll start with Sydney asking questions about movement and then it will be open

“studying shange” – working title

by Nia 0 Comments

studying shange is a docu-series that hopes to capture and explore the ways in which new scholarship in created in the 21st century. The project seeks to answer the questions: “What does it mean to build scholarship and an archive of a living artist and scholar? (How) Does the student as collaborator methodology work in an undergraduate setting? Are Shange’s answers the only answers to questions the academic and cultural worlds have about her work? Where does her opinion factor in to the process of building scholarship? It will include interviews with the students in the Digital Shange Seminar. Students will discuss their individual archival projects as well as the process of the class itself. How did they come to selecting the projects to which they’ve ascribed themselves? How has their experience of the class and as academic collaborators been so far? Extra-university collaborators will explain how they’ve made the digital archiving process possible. I will also interview Professor Hall and others who initiated the study, and even Ntozake Shange herself.

 

Bad Girls In Three Parts: Reading “The Black Sexism Debate”

by Tiana Reid 0 Comments

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You bad girl

You sad girl

You’re such a dirty bad girl

— Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” (1979)

What correct analysis of this rotten capitalist dragon within which we live will legitimize the wholesale rape of black women by black men that goes on now within every city of this land?

— Audre Lorde, “The Great American Disease,” in “The Black Sexism Debate” issue of The Black Scholar (May/June, 1979)

 

How are we to read the 1979 special issue of The Black Scholar on the so-called “Black Sexism Debate”? What word in this title is up for discussion? (Hint: It’s the not the “black” part.) What does it mean that we are in the realm of a named dialogue? What does it mean that we have to name this discussion that is always up for debate? How do we confront the seemingly antiquated (read: racist, patriarchal, and biological) language that permeates the occasion for the issue, Robert Staples’s “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists”?

In this post, I’m not going to rehash any of the arguments from the issue or offer any of my own in part because I can imagine June Jordan in her hazy-beautiful voice (see above) saying, as she does in the opening to “Black Women haven’t ‘Got It All,” “All I have time to say to Robert Staples is this: Are you serious?” (39). Instead, I’m going to present a few provisional fragments as guideposts and entryways into this historical text that embodies such a fascinating affective register. I am totally serious.

Michelle Wallace, the Black Superwoman, and Storm

by gjs2130 1 Comment

http://prezi.com/4jn9gerobtdh/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

By: Gabrielle Smith

 

This weeks readings put Michelle Wallace’s Black Macho and the Myth of the Black Superwoman and Larry Neale’s The Black Arts Movement  in contact with each other. Some of the quotes I found the most interesting from Black Macho were:

“Ever since then it has really baffled me to hear black men say that black women have no time for feminism because being black comes first.” pg. 20

“But what he really wants was to be a man.” pg. 30

“Some black women are beginning to be honest with  themselves about seeing themselves as victims rather than superwomen.” pg. 174

One theme that Michelle Wallace and Larry Neal carried throughout both works relates to race relations. Detailing the impact that white/black women had on white/black men and vice versa. In showing Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman in class I aimed to highlight the interaction between Clay and Lola. Brining into the conversation about black and white America that Neal reminds us exist. Thinking about race relations allows us to connect the dots as to why black women have acquired this identity for being the “superwomen.”

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Speaking of black superwomen Storm is one of the most famous. This character was created by Marvel Comics in 1975. Storm first appeared in Giant-Size X-man #1. Storm has the ability to control the weather and she can fly. She eventually got married to her fellow superhero Black Panther. I can’t help but wonder if the Black Arts Movement has any influence of Storm’s characterization. O yeah, also, she was raised Harlem.

 

 

 

“so our children will know…& be proud”: Coltrane and black music

by Nicole 0 Comments

In Jayne Cortez’s poem, “How Long Has This Trane Been Gone,” she writes about the preservation of black legends and of black history. She says that Blues and Jazz artists have been forgotten; that their work of creating music for and about black people has been overlooked.

“Will you remember their names

or do they have no names

no lives—only products

to be used”

Cortez makes a claim for black music and its ability to allow black people to reclaim their history and a culture of their own. She believes that people have begun to forget the importance of the music of black artists who have died and that black people no longer appreciate the meaning of their artistry. There is an anxiety about forgetting, and therefore losing black culture.

Male Criticisms of Black Womanhood

by Nadia 0 Comments

Last class, Amanda posed the following question:

“In recognizing the importance of for colored girls centralizing collectivity among black women, or what Soyica Diggs Colbert describes as “creating alternative sites of belonging,” how can we begin to explore and deconstruct criticism of the play’s presentation of black men?”

I cannot help but want to answer this question in light of this week’s reading. Though there is an incredible sense of community and sisterhood between the women in for colored girls and part of the glue that binds them is their experiences (whether positive or oppressive) with black men.

In a world without men, for colored girls would cease to exist. Poems such as “latent rapists,” “sorry,” “abortion cycle #1” in for colored girls speak to neglect, rape and misfortune in black women’s lives that is a result of black men’s behavior. Probably the reason why the criticism hits home for the male critics of for colored girls is because the women are not abused by an abstract, distance entity, but are “bein betrayed by men who know [them]” (33) and those have been “considered a friend” (34).