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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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A Play That Found Me and Loved Me Fiercely – Makeen

by Zachery 1 Comment

Oh For Colored Girls… how did you know that I needed you so?

Reading and seeing For Colored Girls were such uniquely incredible experiences for me. Reading it for class, I felt as though some parts resonated with me whereas others confused me. Seeing the play, witnessing the movements, hearing the language and other sounds helped to make concrete any confusion. There were moments that made me want to cry, some in which I laughed, others that made me think of specific moments of my life and even some that were foreign to me but through the performance were made clear. I truly could ramble endlessly about how wonderful an experience the play was, but for the sake of this post, I want to focus on my favorite parts of the play: the recurring elements of girlhood.

The play opened with the seven women storming the stage with a wave of song, dance, claps, jumps, and cheers. They played hand games, mimicked double-dutch, and laughed. Admittedly, this was the first moment that I wanted to cry–– not because there was any feeling of sadness but rather because I felt so seen. Almost immediately, before any lines had been delivered, I was forced to reflect. I thought back to when I might have played similar games, I thought back to when I had ever in my life seen a group of women of color simply having fun in any production; I could not think of any. To my pleasant surprise, these seemingly unstructured moments of joy and play were the ones that united each of the play’s poems. Sometimes accompanied by song, other times by stomps and claps, each of these moments evoked in me a desire to join in, a desire to play.

 

The production closed with a classic four-clap “no music” chant, which could not have been more fitting. The times in my life in which I’ve taken part in such a chant were always at the end of events/closing of spaces that I did not want to leave. This play was certainly one that I wanted to stay in for as long as possible. The women on stage and all of the Black girls/women around me kept up the “no music” chant until the house lights were turned on. The beauty of Black/brown women’s ability to make joy in the midst of pain, to play in the midst of hardship, to create music in the midst of silent was without a doubt the most profound element of For Colored Girls.

Images and Text: Questions of Identity and Meaning

by Nicole 1 Comment

I learned in a photography class at Barnard that early photography began to flourish among the masses with the adoption of portraiture by the middle class in the mid-1800s. Disderí, the European photographer who became famous for photographing the masses, created small photos of people called carte de visite that were more accessible to the middle class. He was often contrasted with other photographers who only photographed the rich. The professor argued that the middle class used photography as a statement of their status and as a way of self-fashioning. We, the students in the class, were prompted to inquire as to what the subjects of photographs were trying to say. Most of the photographs we looked at in this class were not created by black Americans nor did they feature people of color.

Books for borrowing

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

From Ellington Was Not A Street, a children’s book based on the “Mood Indigo” poem in *A Daughter’s Geography*. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Hi all,

While you described your future projects, I suggested some books that might be helpful for you.  Given the library/archive move, I’ve placed these books in a box in the Barnard Center For Research on Women (BCRW) for informal loan. PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY BOOKS. Some of them I’ve had for 20+ years and others are just difficult to get.  Most of you might find Neal Lester’s Ntozake Shange : A Critical Study of the Plays useful. It is very thoroughly documented and the bibliography/notes might lead you to some interesting primary sources. There are several books on Black Women’s Health and the Black Arts Movement. (FYI, I am also loading items in our group Zotero folder as I find things that are related to your project.)

Bracey, John H., Sonia Sanchez, and James Edward Smethurst, eds. SOS/Calling All Black People : A Black Arts Movement Reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.

Clarke, Cheryl. “After Mecca” : Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2005.

Collins, Lisa Gail, and Margo Nathalie Crawford, eds. New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2006.

hooks, bell. Sisters of the Yam : Black Women and Self-Recovery. Boston, MA: South End Press, c1993.

Lester, Neal A. Ntozake Shange : A Critical Study of the Plays /. New York : Garland Pub., 1995.

Shange, Ntozake. Coretta Scott. New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011.

———. Ellington Was Not a Street. 1 edition. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004.

———. Freedom’s a-Callin Me. New York: Amistad, 2012.

———. Lost in Language and Sound: Or, How I Found My Way to the Arts; Essays (audio Book). Unabridged edition. North Kingstown, RI: AudioGO, 2012.

———. The Sweet Breath of Life : A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family. New York: Atria Books, 2004.

———. We Troubled the Waters. New York: Amistad, 2009.

Smethurst, James Edward. The Black Arts Movement : Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2005.

Van Deburg, William L. New Day in Babylon : The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c1992.

Villarosa, Linda, ed. Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

White, Evelyn, ed. The Black Women’s Health Book : Speaking for Ourselves. Seattle, Wash: Seal, c1994.

Shange’s Sentimental Fiction(s), Healing: The Public vs The Private

by Dania 0 Comments

Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo can be described as a Sentimental Fiction, a word that was used by Rafael Vicente whilst in conversation about his work  “White Love: Census and Melodrama in the U.S. Colonizationof the Philippines” and “Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912,” which Vicente framed as fictional work that is very political in that it intentionally uses its plot, its characters, its location to convey and represent structures of power within specific context. And thus does critically and analytically engages the everyday life within structures that seem invisible. For example, Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo focuses on the politics of black girlhood and black woman, the politics of class and the manners in which it affects black girlhood and black womanhood. The sentimental fiction higlights that personal is political. It does so by using the work of literature to tell historical and contemporary stories. It foreshadows the difficulty in compartmentalizing or differentiating the difference between the real and the imaginative. And Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo does that. As Indigo transitions or realizes her “womanhood”, “Indigo stood by the door watching this bloodletting. Silent. Pretty Man surveyed the situation. Put the evilest eye he could gather up on Indigo, who startled under the power of his gaze. That was all it took. The men slowly came back to themselves. Looked Puzzled” (38), there is an interruption, an unwanted interruption that, that enables and forces Indigo to see her womanhood in the way that her mother describe. Manhood, steps in and gawk at blackgirlhood, and the black girl is forced to see her womanhood, in the midst of her girlhood, an interpellation.

In addition to speaking to the interpellation of black girlhood to womanhood, Shange touches on the politics of seeking healing and resolution within the public versus private In Indigo’s personal spell “To rid oneself of the scent of evil”, the spell is very individualize, which is a very radical and non-binary way of think of healing. With the personal, the phrase that states “Violence or purposeful revenge should not be considered in most cases. Only during wars of national liberation, to restore the honor of the race, or to redress calamitous personal & familial trauma, may we consider brute force/annihilation”, following the spell makes a clear distinction about how-whether violence should be used, in the defense of the race publicly- matter of the community should be addressed. Which leads me to question to efficacy of having a divide between the public and the private when black girlhood and womanhood is jeopardized?

 

Songs I was listening as read this week’s reading:

Nina Simone- My Father

Nina Simone- I shall be released

Nina Simone- Blackbird (cover)

 

 

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