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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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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

Combat Poetry/ Creating A Multilingual Narrative

by Danielle 1 Comment

In “Ntozake Shange’s Multilingual Poetics of Relation”, Ania Spyra draws a connection between the English Only/ Official English movements of the 1980’s and Shange’s publication of poetry that fiercely creates a multilingual narrative and identity. Movements to cement English as the official language in the US have been reoccurring/racist themes in history since the 1700s. Turning to English has notoriously been an ugly tactic of forced assimilation, and a defense mechanism against immigration and people of color threatening the colonialist power dynamic. The 1980s saw a revival as English was declared the official language in the commonwealth of Virginia. Last week, I had the opportunity to ask Shange whether A Daughter’s Geography (1983) and From Okra to Greens (1984) were a reaction to these homogenizing efforts. She explained that her choreopoems were/are an unconscious response, and that she sees her poetry as a kind of “combat poetry”.

With our class’s return to A Daughter’s Geography, I wanted to explore how Shange deconstructs English to create multilingual and transnational narratives. In “Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography”, children have geographical names—“daughter/ trinidad”, “son/ san juan”. The slash seems to simultaneously build and deconstruct. In her choreoessay, “my pen is a machete”, Shange writes of how she has to take language “apart to the bone/ so that the malignancies fall away/ leaving us space to literally create our own image.” Here, the slash undecks colonialist grammar, but creates a shared family/identity among people of color across the Americas. Shange writes, “go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men”. She creates movement as she alludes to the absence of borders; the world is not flat, but home to the flow of transnational identities. Shange noted that the slash can indicate a shift in tone and voice. Perhaps the slash is a new beat—the shift of identity/geography—celebrating and connecting a patchwork of peoples all part of the same rhythm and history. The last line—“we are feeding our children the sun”—is fierce, and identity is vibrant. Through deconstructing English and building multilingual narratives, African-Americans can find revolution in the feast of the sun—the vessel of life.

I want to conclude with a quote Shange said during her class visit: “When you take control of the language, you take control of life. When you take control of life, you can have a movement. When you have a movement, you can have a revolution.”

Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography

i have a daughter/ mozambique
i have a son/ angola
our twins
salvador & johannesburg/ cannot speak
the same language
but we fight the same old men/ in the new world
we are so hungry for the morning
we’re trying to feed our children the sun
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
but old men spit on us/ shackled our limbs
but for a minute
our cries are the panama canal/ the yucatan
we poured thru more sea/ more ships/ to manila
ah ha we’re back again
everybody in manila awready speaks spanish
the old men sent for the archbishop of canterbury
“can whole continents be excommunicated?”
“what wd happen to the children?”
“wd their allegiance slip over the edge?”
“don’t worry bout lumumba/ don’t even think bout
ho chi minh/ the dead cant procreate”
so say the old men
but I have a daughter/ la habana
I have a son/ guyana
our twins
santiago & brixton/ cannot speak
the same language
yet we fight the same old men
the ones who think helicopters rhyme with hunger
who think patrol boats can confiscate a people
the ones whose dreams are full of none of our
children
the see mae west & harlow in whittled white cafes
near managua/ listening to primitive rhythms in
jungles near pétionville
with bejeweled benign nativess
ice skating in abidjan
unaware of the rest of us in chicago
all the dark urchins
rounding out the globe/ primitively whispering
the earth is not flat old men
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
go on over the edge/ go on over the edge old men
you’ll see us in luanda, or the rest of us
in chicago
rounding out the morning/
we are feeding our children the sun

The Collective Black Dance Was Alive (9/17/15)

by Yemi 0 Comments

 

In “Bocas: My Daughter’s Geography” Ntozake Shange addresses a question: what does it mean to have a shared history of colonization, but exist in different intersections of longitude and latitude (i have a daughter / mozambique, i have a son/ angola p. 21)?

Her work doesn’t hesitate to make different peoples a collective: “we fight the same old men… we have a daughter… we have a son… we embraced & made children of the new world.” In this way the persistence in which these individuals fought to make change for their children by feeding them the sun and encouraging their dreams constructs resistance as a global site. Resistance becomes “the same language” in Mozambique, Angola, Salvador, Johannesburg, La Habana, Guyana, Santiago, Brixton, Trinidad, San Juan, Cape town, and Palestine. Resistance is obvious in the words

 

“all the dark urchins

rounding out the globe/ primitively whispering

the earth is not flat old men.”

 

The situation Shange is narrating bases the resistance of colored peoples as an aftermath to the historical occurrences that stole away their location of origin. Furthermore, the end of this three-part poem, New World Core, elucidates the strong opposition of ethnic peoples to their colonization through the two new geographical sites they occupy: Luanda and Chicago.

 

In New World Core Shange writes

 

“or language is tactile

colored & wet

our tongues speak

these words

we dance

these words.”

 

The meaning of this excerpt is rooted in her piece “why i had to dance//”

Dance becomes the discriminate way memory utilizes movement to bring forth an understand of history. The flexibility of location, if it were described as a time and place, is expressed in phrase “a continuity of an aesthetic that is at the heart of blackness//”

Resistance is still a global site, but can instead be viewed through movement: “wherever the colored people were. There were dances i could do & claim as mine/ cause/ i was colored too (52).”

The collective “black dance was alive with the spirit of the caribbean and africa (55)” and subconsciously makes its way into the lives of those living outside of their origins.