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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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“then I moved to Harlem” (Updated)

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

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!

a blessed place.

by Amanda 0 Comments
only so much i can do

“only so much i can do” in The Sweet Breath of Life by Ntozake Shange and Kamoinge.

On Monday, the class spoke about some of their favorite pieces from The Sweet Breath of Life by Shange and Kamoinge. One of my favorite image and text pairings from The Sweet Breath of Life (pictured above) depicts a wall—layered by an aged striped wallpaper, pictures of the Lord, a torn out book page covered by a straw hat, and a family photo collage. The title: only so much i can do suggests the narrator finds something on the wall that is in need of fixing and/or attention, but it seems there are only limited approaches to remedying the problem. Considering the suggestive quality of the title, and the reiteration of the fixed thing/circumstance via the wall as physical space and title of the piece, themes of compromise and agency become central.

While the title, only so much i can do, is indicative of the narrator’s limited and/or lack of agency, the text suggest that there is indeed a lot that can be done by the narrator to change the circumstance—the circumstance at hand being the Lord’s gaze erroneously falling in the direction opposite that of the family photos. The narrator’s concern with the Lord’s gaze and re-arrangement of the family photos serves as metaphor for laboring to bring oneself and one’s loved ones into a blessed place/space. It is in that place that we find the extraordinary in the mundane—miracle.

to revisit old pains

by Melissa 2 Comments

Our conversation at the ICP about the practice of imposing text on photograph to produce an image – distinct from the practice of photographing – to relay a story/narrative that is non-linear and moves in liquid form through more than a single channel amplifies my understanding of embodied knowledge.  Both Decarava/Hughes’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life and Shange/Kamoinge’s The Sweet Breath of Life are artistic undertakings that function through text and photograph to relay multidimensional images/narratives/stories. They attempt to render a full account of Black livelihoods via explorations of the extraordinarily mundane and familiar landscapes around which existence in kinship and individuality take form.

Black Presentation and Authenticity through Photography

by Clarke 1 Comment

who’s hair isn’t done / let me get in that head honey / the day is lace and crinolines / curls, satins, and layers of beauty / who’s mama wouldn’t be proud / who’s eye won’t be turned when / i saunter outta this room where / the magic is and become it – The Sweet Breath of Life

 

And they has a party every Saturday night / usually not no big party / Just neighbors and home folks…But it’s nice to young folks all dressed up going somewhere–maybe to a party. But it’s sad if you ain’t invited.

The Sweet Flypaper of Life

A number of continuities exist between Shange and Kamoinge’s The Sweet Breath of Life and Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life, including authentic representations of black families and neighborhoods, and the power of pairing image and text.

We’ve only just begun! Our first ICP class

by Kim Hall 4 Comments

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?