for colored girls – The Worlds of Ntozake Shange and Digital Storytelling

A Play That Found Me and Loved Me Fiercely – Makeen

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by Zachery on November 24, 2019 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.

Reading Zake: Vamo Hablar Ingles

by Ortiz on October 30, 2019 0 Comments

As I read for coloured girls by Shange, I was saddened by the idea that I hadn’t found her before. Before, when my curling hair and español didn’t fit in my mouth, didn’t fit in my writing, in my thoughts. When my own identity alienated me from my conceived self, a self that was white-passing (at least in South Jamaica, where white was just skin), and desired a white family and white traditions. As I read Shange, 21 and no longer desiring a white

identity, but desperately clinging to the aspects of my identity that are deeply Latina and give me culture, sabor at Barnard, I am deeply moved by her words. I annotated her work, as pictured, expressing the way my heart stopped when her stanzas did, or when it left me full of something unrecognizable – was it love for myself, or the people I identify with? Shange’s writing is not just feminist writing, it is not just transnational and globalized, it is not just about culture and music and movement, it is about humanity as its core. It is about empathy and love and passion, pain, and healing and for these reasons, for the shared experiences Shange expresses in for coloured girls¸ I am able to tie myself to a story that is not necessarily, explicitly my own.

we deal wit emotion too much

so why don’t we go on ahead & be white then/

& make everythin dry & abstract wit no rhythm & no

reelin for sheer sensual pleasure/ yes let’s go on & be white. (58-59)

— and I wanted to be white, for so long, because, as Shange expresses, maybe being white means not having to address the idea of the woman of color that is too sensitive, too concerned about herself. Maybe this was a way to remove myself from myself? But as Shange states, “bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma / i havent conquered yet” (59). Haven’t conquered because I refuse to view myself as separate, fragmented pieces, at least not anymore.

Now, as I read other literary works, I search for myself. I don’t search for a regurgitated image of what others think I am, because I am too complicated, too sanctified, too magic, too music (60-61) to be one thing.

El español de Shange, the reference to the music of my childhood, merengue, immediately reminded me of Fefita’s performance of Vamo Hablar Ingles; watching as a woman dominate a stage, surrounded by music and movement and culture / my culture adopted a new meaning. A song that only in asserting to “hablar ingles” is adopting the same transnational, global connections that Shange evokes, and in a sense, it’s all tied together.

1976 and 2019

by Elizabeth on October 23, 2019 0 Comments

The 70s are an elusive decade to me. I was taught in school to associate it with the elimination of racism. Even at home, a lot of my older relatives focused more on the changes that had been made in their lifetimes, and almost seemed to confine ugliness the past and ignore it in the present.

It is interesting to think about the different shows like “American Son” that have occupied the same space as for colored girls, especially ones that also focus on Black women.

Springer calls attention to the histories of Black feminism that is often left out of history in saying, “[…] The mainstream and black press vilified black women writers, in particular, Wallace and Shange. However, these women are considered pioneers of the contemporary black feminist movement for daring to assert, if not ideologically feminist consciousness, a gender consciousness integral to the struggle for black liberation in the 1970s.” When I read this sentence, my mind went to what I had just seen scrolling through Facebook- the Public’s revival of for colored girls has just been named a NYT Critic’s Pick. Granted, Ben Brantley should not be held as the authority on what constitutes good theatre, but it is hard to conceptualize that a piece centering women of color has gone from being highly criticized (while still successful, I should note), to being a work that seems to be a part of the theatrical canon.

However, I think focusing solely on these successes can be dangerous. On one hand, I think it can be a form of self-protection, similar to what I think my relatives who had survived Jim Crow have done. However, I think it’s important to think critically about the successes and the reasons behind them. It seems that right now in the “post-2016” mindset, people are desperate to prove that they aren’t like that, whatever that is. While I wasn’t around to see the original production, I also wonder what has been left out of history, just like the Black feminists Springer writes about, that would explain why the theatrical women of color were so well-received while women of color in real life were not. I wonder if in 40 years, people will be unlearning and relearning the history of Black feminists, both of the 1970s and of the 2010s. Will they remember why it is so important for this for colored girls to be happening, and to be happening now? Will they know that the audiences are often filled with wealthy, white patrons of the Public who are trying to make America post-racial again? Will they know about Shange’s life and struggles? Will they know about mine?

representation and purpose

by Elizabeth on October 8, 2019 1 Comment

In the podcast “Seeing Yourself in the Archives,” one of the students says, “one of the most important things is to see yourself represented and find purpose, and also heal.” It was interesting to hear representation framed in this way because I typically encounter the term in reference to how vast the lack of representation of marginalized folks is in media, academia, or other spheres is. We typically talk about the costs of lack of representation- negative stereotypes internalized, symbolic annihilation, exclusion, etc. While these conversations are crucial, this framing can at times suggest that representation needs to “happen” in order for non-marginalized folks or exclusive spaces to become educated, inclusive, and diverse. The framing that the student chose instead highlights the positives of representation. Instead, the emphasis is creating art “for us, by us” as a means of finding our own purposes and healing. Based on what we have read from Shange so far, this is something that her work is meant to accomplish. I think of “for colored girls…” and the emphasis it places on the women sharing their individual stories and collective experiences as women of color. For Shange, representation is not supposed to pander to what a white audience (theatrical or otherwise) would expect. Shange’s work’s representation is best summarized by this line:

i found god in myself

& i loved her / i loved her fiercely

It is an opportunity to share and hear one’s individual and collective stories and find healing in those actions.

i’m not sorry

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by Onyekachi Iwu on October 10, 2018 1 Comment

Image result for sorry beyonce

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxsmWxxouIM

One of my favorite poems from For Colored Girls is the poem “sorry”. MAN I wish this poem wasn’t so damn relatable. I literally found myself laughing out loud. I love the way Shange personifies the “sorry”, stating “I got sorry greeting me at my front door” and how she can’t even open her closet without the empty “sorries” of men spilling out at her feet. I think I also appreciate the specificity of it. As a queer woman who dates men, being begrudgingly “apologized” to, only for that “apology” being followed by the same exact behavior the falling week is such a specific and painful experience I never thought about before. It’s so validating how Shange was able to give space for that, and the specific experiences we need to heal from lackluster love from men.

you were always inconsistent

doin somethin & then bein sorry

beatin my heart to death!

talkin bout you sorry well,

i will not call,

i’m not goin to be nice,

i will raise my voice,

& scream & holler

& break things & race the engine

& tell all your secrets bout yourself to your face

& i will list in detail everyone of my wonderful lovers

& their ways i will play oliver lake loud!

& i wont be sorry for none of it

The poem discusses how no matter men’s violence, when they do apologize, it’s not in a place to heal the situation or help progress the relationship. Instead, it is usually a silencing tactic. It’s a word that crosses its arms, waiting by the door for immediate forgiveness and forgetfulness. There is an expectation that you must do the work to forgive and heal alone, and to expect for him to do this work with you is asking for too much.

This poem immediately reminded me of Beyonce’s song “Sorry” from her Lemonade Album.

Now you want to say you’re sorry

Now you want to call me crying

Now you gotta see me wilding

Now I’m the one that’s lying

And I don’t feel bad about it

It’s exactly what you get

Stop interrupting my grinding

I ain’t thinking ’bout you

In “Sorry” by Beyonce, she repeats multiple times how she’s not “sorry” for her behavior (staying out late, spending time with her girls, and dancing). Unlike the men in Shange’s poem, she will not give an empty sorry to follow her behavior. She argues that her lover has driven her to this point, after making her miserable, waiting late for him, and having him lie to her constantly—”beatin her heart to death” as Shange puts it. Beyonce assures him multiple time “i ain’t thinkin bout you”, similar to Shange’s “I will not call” and “i will be sorry for none of it” assertion. The song is about Beyonce celebrating her own company and her companionship with other women in place of the empty companionship from a men. The video has groups of women dancing, carefree and unbothered, reminding me of images of Shange.

Third World Women’s Alliance/Making Use of Digital Archives

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by Kim Hall on December 14, 2015 0 Comments

First edition of Triple Jeopardy, the newspaper of the Third World Women’s Alliance

I wanted to just make a pitch to everyone to remember that you can find primary sources in rooms beyond those designated as “archives” cultural institutions like the Schomburg: sometimes they are in main collections or (since digitization is happening at an increasing rapid clip) online. You should be inventive and wide-ranging when looking for accessible copies of works you might want to use. For example, following up on Michelle’s Archive Task #1, I was trying to see if there was anyplace in NYC that has papers related to the Third World Women’s Alliance. The main branch of the NYPL (not the “archive” per se) has Triple Jeopardy, the newspaper of the TWWA, in its main collection. However, that journal is also available online in the Independent Voices database.

Independent Voices is an open-access collection of digitized independent publications. It can be a very rich source for Black Power/”post” Black Power and Feminist materials. For example, I found several pieces by Ntozake (also spelled Ntosake) in the database. Since some of you are interested in healing, I have a screenshot of her talking about her work with “injured” women in an extensive interview published in the literary journal, River Styx.

Ntozake’s response to interview questions from Students at Harris-Stowe College in Saint Louis (1978). Note the use of the dash in the interview transcription.

I highly recommend this interview, Shange talks about many of the things you are investigating now: Black Power, Spirituality, Third Worldism, Feminism, childhood, etc. Independent Voices also suggests that you help with digitization by correcting some of the OCR (Optical-Scanning Recognition) errors.

Shange, Ntozake. “Ntozake Shange: Live from Saint Louis!” River Styx, no. 5 (1979): 91–115.

UPDATE: I absolutely forgot to share with you Archive Grid, an archive search engine that lets you map searches. for example, when I did a search for Triple Jeopardy, once I moved from the daunting “list view,” the summary view let me know that in Philadelphia (hey Michelle!) there was a copy of one issue located in the “Women’s Health Concerns Committee Records” at the University of Pennsylvania.

Closer to home, I discovered that the Columbia literary magazine, Emanon, published some of Ntozake Shange’s poetry from when she was a Barnard Student (search Paulette Williams).

embodied responses: what it takes to feel real

Blogposts

by Kiani on December 14, 2015 2 Comments

“i commenced to buying pieces of gold/ 14 carat/ 24 carat/ 18 carat gold/ every time some black person did something that waz beneath him as a black person & more like a white person. i bought gold cuz it came from the earth/ & more than likely it came from south africa/ where the black people are humiliated & oppressed like in slavery. i wear all these things at once/ to remind the black people that it cost a lot for us to be here/ our value/ can be known instinctively/ but since so many black people are having a hard time not being like white folks/ i wear these gold pieces to protest their ignorance/ their disconnect from history. i buy gold with a vengeance/ each time someone appropriates my space or my time without permission/ each time someone is discourteous or actually cruel to me/ if my mind is not respected/ my body toyed with/ i buy gold/ & weep. i weep as i fix the chains round my neck/ my wrists/ my ankles.” pg 51, Spell #7 of Three Pieces

For me, Spell #7 was harrowing in its candidness. In between the lines of the banter and bar talk and blackface, the text ate away at me. This quote was particularly salient in my reading of the text. Here, Maxine describes painful experiences of appropriation, disrespect, humiliation, and oppression done to her by her oppressors and by those of her skin kind. Maxine copes with these experiences by materializing them. Her pain is embodied by jewelry that reminds of where she comes from, or where she’d like to be, or where she should be. She identifies with objects of gold from this place with bodies like hers experiencing things like she is. She puts the gold on her body. The implication of any kind of adornment is weighted with questions of identification, self-concept, history, and context. The implications of this diasporic woman putting a diasporic object on her body are huge and almost agonizing as these objects represent a lost connection and a visceral connection to pain in her immediate life. Adornment is thus a historic and revived identification with pain. Maxine wears these pieces of gold to remind herself and others of the pain of being; the realness of being a black body in space, in a world that rejects that realness as often as it can.

The act of adorning one’s self is often seen as this purely positive means of communicating one’s self, one’s means, one’s class, and one’s convictions. This excerpt from Spell #7 shows the reader Maxine’s or anyone’s greater reasons for decorating their bodies in the ways that they do. The quote calls to mind the explicit detail with which Shange describes the women and their colors in for colored girls– their “rhinestones etchin the corners of her (their) mouths” and their “oranges & magnolia scented wrists” … signs of fragility and femininity and also a kind of armor against oppressive forces. A kind of homage to the many sweet ways a body can be and an acknowledgement of why they are that way.

A Living Archive: Meeting Zake

by Nia on October 26, 2015 1 Comment

This post is late.

It took two days, three naps, several sessions of frenzied storytelling, and cataloguing, reviewing, and obsessing over my footage for me to properly reflect on and come to conclusions about Thursday and Friday’s encounters with Ntozake Shange. Last year when Professor Hall gave me Shange’s address so I could write to her and I spent all summer not knowing how I could possibly put into words all the things Shange is for me, I could not imagine meeting and interacting with her.

“provenance:” the beginning, the origin point of an archive; even if two subjects interact, they do not mix

What is an archive? It is and is not a collection of texts that signify a subject: a time, a place, a genre, a person. Objects which illuminate aspects of the subject to which they are attached. This definition, as flimsy and as finite as it is, is constantly under duress. There are politics around what subjects academia deems worthy of an archive (they didn’t collect Basquiat’s journals until the yt gaze on his art had already killed him). There are politics around what can be deemed an archive. An attic full of family heirlooms, a childhood bedroom undisturbed, a quilt of old clothing, can be studied to reveal what they signify, but are they an “Archive.” Capital letters Full Stop. There are even politics around what is kept long enough to signify anything. As Shange pointed out, ” the day they freed the slaves in Brazil they [the government, the slaveowners] were commanded to destroy all the documents about slavery.” Wh(o,y,at) is history? Who has access?

“original order:” trying to maintain text in the order in which it is received.

The internet is an archive. One to which everyone (but not everyone) and anyone (but not anyone) can contribute. It is an open and radical space in which laymen’s can contribute their presence to history, can disrupt the canonical/dominant definitions of text, art, knowledge, history, existence; the list is an ever-expanding infinite. Yet, this classification/validation of the capital I “Internet” is often resisted by those who classify. There are divisive politics about what academia, journalism, and other spheres held holy by ytmen and held captive from all others save a few about what can be considered a text. Wh(o,at) is worth study? Collective recognition is what deems a text important, what creates its value. This is why we value autographs and object once owned, worn, touched, and eaten by celebrities and historical figures. How does agency, voice, and access factor into the process? For every text validated as worthy of research and study, there is one used for surveillance and marketing. A text is, as Shannon, the Shange archivist noted, “a piece that we allow to speak.” What we do with its words is up to us?

I drew pumpkins and pineapples and apples and seagulls on the page. I processed.

I napped for three hours after the open session on Friday and my subsequent interview with Shange. I discovered through it not only thing which validated and expanded my own views about womanhood, Black womanhood, love, sex, my body, my aethestic, and many other things which is would take more words than I have to express, but I also discovered that I have more in common with my classmates than I previously thought. Even with some distance, I have only movements and sounds to name the experience I had meeting Shange. Gentle hums in my throat, behind my ears, in the pit of stomach; the wrinkle I surely gave myself from darting my eyes, unable to meet her gaze. The ineffable sadness I felt that I did not hug her to say goodbye. So I offer only my notes from that day for now, my interview with her for later. Provenance of my own archive.

Movement + Lit

“the joy of breathlessness…readies the body for literature” – Zake

“approach language from a state of excitement” – Zake

Begin interviews with an excessive movement/running, dancing, drop swings

“My writing come from a pit, from deep inside of me instead of from my skin” – Zake

“slashes indicate a change in intonation…intent or voice” – Zake

“I wanted to read somebody so I decided I had to read myself” – Zake

poh-ten-see

Male Criticisms of Black Womanhood

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by Nadia on October 13, 2015 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).

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