I really enjoyed this short multi-media piece from filmmaker Thomas Allen Harris. The story blends audio, photography and text, creating an innovative, reflective experience of an otherwise dated image. Read More
“then I moved to Harlem” (Updated)
Eye-opening discussion with Bradley at ICP
The BCRW blog is hosting posts specifically related to the new Harlem Semester Initiative. Last week I wrote a post about what it means to include our course in the Harlem Semester.
Other announcements:
–At the request of the Barnard Department Chairs, the BCRW is sponsoring a faculty-student only conversation about campus diversity (read more at the link). It starts at 5, but if you go after class, you will get there in plenty of time.
–Thanks to Nadia for getting her really compelling blogpost up on time! The rest of you should start your check in comments this week. Remember that the comments period closes on Sunday and we start again next week.
–Tiana and I will start meeting with you in small groups to continue this process of refining your project. You can sign up for a small group time on the google doc that’s already been shared. The times will be:
Thursday, February 11, 2016 at 2pm
Monday, February 15, 2016 (11am or 12:30pm)
–Don’t forget to volunteer to lead the movement break! You got an invite via gmail and the weekly announcement in Courseworks.
UPDATE:
-I’d love to have some of the photos you guys are taking during class activities. You can upload them at this link. (https://dropitto.me/Shange). I sent the password via Courseworks Announcement (but it should be easy to figure out). If you can put your name in the metadata(!), then I know who to credit.
-I’ll start a “tips” tag on the blog for people to do short posts with tips regarding research or digital tools that you think others might find helpful.
-Bradly shared the handouts he mentioned in today’s class. I will upload them to Courseworks soon!
We’ve only just begun! Our first ICP class
One of my favorite images from *Sweet Breath of Life.* I’m determined to make a quilt from it one day. The blogpost “Intimate Moments in the African Diaspora,” gives a peek into the Kamoinge process. (Click the photo).
Welcome Back to “The Worlds of Ntozake Shange & Digital Storytelling”! On Monday we’ll start a new phase of our adventure. We talked about how Zake moved knowledge from the body to the page/stage; how do we move “carnal intellectuality” to the visual and the digital? We’ve talked (and felt) a lot about art and various forms of embodiment; this semester we’ll begin talking more about visuality—both about how we make stories from objects/things we see and how we read differently when we see text on screen as opposed to a book or paper. How do we make visual knowledges that come with motion, that emerge from connections between people, and that reside in everyday acts like cooking or everyday objects that are not usually recorded? Read More
Black Arts Movement Notes
Black Arts Movement Notes
Who are the main players of the black arts movement?
- Amiri Baraka (poet) is considered the father of the movement
- Baraka was “highly visible publisher, a celebrated poet, a major music critic, and an Obie award winning playwright.”
- Larry Neal was an African American theater scholar who worked with Baraka to open the Black Arts Repertory Theater School.
How did it begin, how long did it last?
- It lasted from 1965-1975
- “emerged in the wake of the black power movement”
- The movement born after the assassination of Malcolm X on 2/21/1965
- people divided between Political Nationalism (Black Panther Movement) and Cultural Nationalism
- Baraka’s symbolic move from the Lower East Side to Harlem in March of 1995.
- Baraka founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School (BARTS) that year.
- Before Malcom X’s assassination Baraka lived successfully in an integrated community.
- The black arts movement was inspired by the Umbra Workshop, which was a group of young black writers on the Lower East Side. Another group at the time was the Harlem Writers Guild which included Maya Angelou, but the fact “that Umbra was primarily poetry- and performance-oriented established a significant and classic characteristic of the movement’s aesthetics.”
- When Baraka moved back to New Jersey BARTS fell apart but the ideals remained.
What are the main ideologies and goals of the group?
- Cultural Nationalism called for the creation of black poetry, literature, theater and visual arts that represented black culture and history. The “autonomy of black artists” was emphasized.
- Larry Neal says it is the “aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.”
- Some of the main concepts came from RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement) which was a national organization popular in New York. Larry Neal was a member of this group.
- There also was an organization called US (as opposed to “them’) led by Maulana Karenga
- Elijah Muhammad’s Chicago-based Nation of Islam.
Where was its locus and what other areas did it reach?
- BAM began in the New York area but spread to Detroit (Broadside Press and Naomi Long Madgett’s Lotus Press), Chicago (Negro Digest/Black World and Third World Press ) and San Francisco (Journal of Black Poetry, the Black Scholar).
What is the legacy of the Black Arts Movement?
- The Black arts movement is inventive in its use of language and communication (performance, music and actual speech).
- “Black Arts aesthetics emphasized orality, which includes the ritual use of call and response both within the body of the work itself as well as between artist and audience.”
- “I think what Black Arts did was inspire a whole lot of Black people to write. Moreover, there would be no multiculturalism movement without Black Arts. Latinos, Asian Americans, and others all say they began writing as a result of the example of the 1960s. Blacks gave the example that you don’t have to assimilate. You could do your own thing, get into your own background, your own history, your own tradition and your own culture. I think the challenge is for cultural sovereignty and Black Arts struck a blow for that,” (Ishmael Reed, 1995).
Side by Side: Ntozake Shange/Langston Hughes
Reading Shange, I’ve been thinking a lot about Langston Hughes. The way her phrases have tones and her poems seem to unfold in the rhythm of song reminds me of Hughes’s prose, infused with the blues. I was excited to see in nappy edges, a reference to the Harlem Renaissance poet: “st. louis was just desegregating herself, while i grew. sometimes a langston hughes poem or a bobby timmons tune was the only safe place i cd find” (19). Like Shange, Hughes makes words dance, and leaves space for music to exist as an external character. Both of their works have strong, vivid connections to place and are in conversation with the roots of diaspora. To delve more into this comparison, I explored two poems that I feel interact nicely: Shange’s “just as the del vikings stole my heart” and Hughes’s “Theme for English B”.
The first half of Shange’s poem refers to “she”—“her fairy godmother retired”—while the second half relies on the first person “i”. “She” retired after the “brown vs. ferguson decision” (a reference to two cases, one which repudiates the other). By combining the two, Shange speaks to the illusion of the “fairy godmother”, the notion that the latter (Ferguson) made life easier for women of color. The law has never fended for her: “i live my own lil rock/ cover my own back anywhere i wanna go”; “i” is the only person she can rely on to survive. “Theme for English B” is about an assignment that Langston Hughes’s white professor gave the class: “Go home and write a page tonight”. This poem also creates a dichotomy; Hughes writes of “me”—Hughes—and “you”—the professor. The italics that belong to the professor read: “And let that page come out of you—Then, it will be true”. Hughes begs the question, “I wonder if it’s that simple?” His truth is in constant conflict with this man who is “older—and white—and somewhat more free”.
My interpretation of each closing is that both Shange and Hughes resolve to write poems as a form of resistance/as a way to construct identity. Shange writes “i learned only by breakin the law/ i am separate/ i am equal”. I wonder if she’s, in part, referring to breaking the law of language; by deconstructing the laws of colonialist language, she frees her identity in poetry. She continues, “Crackers are born with the right to be alive/ i am making mine up/ right here in your face”. Perhaps, what she is “making up” is this poem; poetry becomes a song/dance of resistance. These lines remind me of what Shange refers to as “the moral of the story” in the opening choreopoem “wow…yr just like a man!”: “When words & manners leave you no space for yrself/ make a poem/ very personal/ very clear/ & yr obstructions will join you or disappear/” (16). Hughes refers to “the page” in his poem. He writes, “you, me, talk on this page”, this page that is supposed to be “true”. Throughout this poem, Hughes has a dialogue with his professor about identity, and where, specifically, that identity comes from (“New York”, “the Harlem Branch Y”, “Bessie”). The last line—“This is my page for English B”—references the “page” as opposed to “theme” (the title). I’ve read this poem many, many times over the years, and I read this as: the theme comes from within the page; through poetry, Hughes uncovers his identity/his truth. This page is a form of resistance; the poem belongs to him.
I find the rhythms and themes of Shange and Hughes’s work to be in conversation, and I am fascinated with how they re-construct identity through poetry. To read the two poems discussed in full, I’ve included both below…
just as the del vikings stole my heart
(oh auntie emma)
my fairy godmother retired
with the brown vs. ferguson decision
she reasoned i waz divested of my separate
but equal status & waz entitled
to whatever lil white girls got
from whoever they got it from
since she waz raised in greener pastures
& knew the devil only in the blues saw-dust
of a raunchy dawn/ a cruel dance on the edge of a dime
so she retired/
she waznt bout to misegenate her powers/
integrate em either/
leavin me to fend for myself
i’ve felt her absence from the moment she escaped
with my love of who i am/ conjurin myself
thru catcalls & mailbox cherry bombs was not my forte
i learned only by breakin the law/
i am separate
i am equal
i live my own lil rock/
cover my own back anywhere i wanna go
& i go anywhere i want
crackers are born with the right to be alive
i am making mine up
right here in your face
why don’t you
go on
& push me
Theme for English B
The instructor said,
Go home and write
a page tonight.
And let that page come out of you—
Then, it will be true.
I wonder if it’s that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:
It’s not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I’m what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me—we two—you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York too.) Me—who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me NOT like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?
Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white—
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That’s American.
Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.
This is my page for English B.
They Reminisce Over You: Remembering to Heal & Remembering to Prompt Action
“It is not enough to reunite with the people in a past where they no longer exist. We must rather reunite with them in their recent counter move which will suddenly call everything into question; we must focus on that zone of hidden fluctuation where the people can be found. For let there be no mistake, it is here that their souls are crystallized and their perception and respiration transfigured… When the colonized intellectual writing for his people uses the past he must do so with the intention of opening up the future, of spurring them into action and fostering hope.”
Frantz Fanon The Wretched of the Earth (163- 167).
In On National Culture, Fanon highlights the tendency of the “colonized intellectual” to look to the past “in order to escape the supremacy of white culture,” (155). In highlighting this truth, looking to the past becomes understood as a wanting practice. Fanon suggests a larger amount of energies be spent using the past as an aide in centering the present moment where the people become woke, where they define themselves, where their agency molds the future.
Reading this quote makes me think heavily about Harlem and healing. Why I think of Harlem, always, within landscapes of time— Harlem in the future, Harlem as I know it today, and, especially, Harlem in the past—is a reflection of one of the ways I’ve chosen to “escape the supremacy of white culture,” or, rather, one of the ways I’ve chosen to heal. For this reason, reshaping Fanon’s words to communicate the necessity of remembering the past, finding solace in history was most pressing. However, I wanted to do this in a way that recognized the value of centralizing the current experiences of the people and propelling them into action, as Fanon encourages, while placing emphasis on the relationship between remembering to heal and remembering to incite action.
Spaces are where I hear changes in the voice of the speaker; (double) slashes highlight words and connecting phrases; dashes that engulf words are meant to create a level of erasure.
it is –not- enuf/
to -re-unite with the people/
in a past/ where they no longer exist
we/ must -rather re-unite with them
in their recent counter move/
which will suddenly call everything into question/
we must focus on that zone/ of hidden fluctuation//
where the people can be found/
for let there be no mistake/
it is here that their soulz are crystallized & their perception n respiration transfigurd//
when the colonizd intellectual writin
for his people
uses the past he /must/ do so with the intention of openin up the future/
of spurring them inta action & fosterin hope.
*I listened to a lot of beats while going through this week’s reading and while writing this post. Here are a few.
Edit/Update: A link to a definition of “woke/stay woke” has been added. I also encourage everyone to listen to Erykah Badu’s Master Teacher and to check out staywoke.us