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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Archive Find of the Week: “They Are Safe for Now”

by Clarke 1 Comment

Typed copy of Ntozake Shange’s (Paulette Williams) poem “They Are Safe for Now” published in 1966 in The Phoenix, the literary publication of her high school, Trenton High. 

This piece interested me initially because the poem was typed on a browned sheet of paper and the bottom left corner was significantly ripped off. I noticed the date, 1966, and the authorship, Paulette Williams. I recalled that there weren’t many pieces in the Archive that were taken from this time in Shange’s life, and I also hadn’t seen any using her name assigned at birth.

Archive Task #2

by Sophia 0 Comments
I went to the Schomburg to find the January 1979 copy of Ms. featuring Michele Wallace on the cover that inspired my project. I found it in box 6 (call number MG 739) of the Michele Wallace papers.
I wanted to revisit the document because I had only really glanced at it during our first class visit, and wanted to 1) capture images of the feature article on Black Macho, and 2) peruse the issue for any and all other mention of black women. It was absolutely as interesting as I’d hoped, as it included a review of a poetry collection by Audre Lorde, a national list of black female groups/alliances, and a small list of black women who had suffered as a result of the cutoff of federal funds for abortion. The work was fairly visually compelling to me from the perspective of editorial design, but I really would’ve liked to see some ads featuring black women, which were not included in the issue. The employees at the Schomburg and I had a slight difficulty accessing the finding aid for Michele Wallace’s papers, and then the boxes were mislabeled, but otherwise the process was fairly easy. However, I did spend quite a while searching for her letters about the Ms. coverage and didn’t find anything, and it’s frustrating to not know if I somehow missed something, or if they’re in some other box somewhere.

Archiving Task #2

by Kiani 1 Comment

I utilized the Barnard Archives in my research. I searched the Shange Papers for journals and manuscripts of her books. Mainly, I focused on Box #5 of her journals and notebooks. I found the items through the Draft Guide to the Ntozake Shange Papers created by Shannon O’Neill. I was compelled to search through notebooks and journals as I speculated that they would provide insight about Shange’s process as it pertains to her writing, cooking, and directing.

The materials that I found were interesting for what they did not reveal. Physically, the journals were very diverse. The journals were from different places in the world, made of different kinds of paper, and of different sizes. The journals were mostly sparse– revealing a sprinkling of important dates, speeches, menus for shared meals, and guest lists but filled mostly with empty, crinkled, and waterlogged but dried pages. There would be a lot of activity for a dozen pages and then the rest of the journal would be empty.

I could infer something about Shange’s process from the physicality and content of the journals or I could look more into her directors notes in the manuscripts of her plays and the editors notes in her books. I wasn’t frustrated with the task as it revealed that I would need to look deeper into the archive which I look forward to doing!