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.
Shange says Dance! Shange says Write! Keep on pushing on
When Ntozake Shange came to class we had the privilege of the archivist, the scholar, and the creator all in one room. We had someone to guide us through the materials, we had the written work, we had our own motivation to learn, but most importantly we had the living spring, the touchstone to which we could understand, the body to which we could trace back years of experience and extrapolate an abundance of meaning. With this dynamic it seemed like we could solve all problems and address all nuances of the black experience that may have once slipped by us.
Ntozake Shange in front of Barnard gates (10/23/15)
… (Reflections) … (continue) … (below) …
Much of Shange’s defiance of the Black Arts Movement was because it was for “macho males.” In a similar way she went to alternative dance teachers spaces and because she wanted to learn a dance “other than yoruba.” How did Shange choose which movements to be a part of? Which dance to dance? Was the nature of her defiance simply to move against the grain in every way? I had always wondered about the strategy of rejection and how refusal would effect politics and thus effect history. Shange answered my questions and unearthed the meaning behind her actions by explaining: “When you accept something/ don’t accept, it controls the historical narrative.”
Refusing the Black Arts Movement was a fight for women to not only be considered, but to be recognized as essential to the progress of any black agenda. Learning dances outside of Yoruba, meant that countries which fell outside the demarcations of West Africa could be represented in America and more importantly in the New World, which housed many nations and black aesthetics, that Shange was creating.
The purpose of arts, dance and writing, is to use individual creativity to get to a place where “we [the black collective] can restructure and reconstitute the universe” to be one that is inclusive of us. That is why Shange challenges African Americans to pick up another language, so we are not defaulting to the language of the oppressor. “When you take control of the language, you take control of your life.”
The Spyra piece describes Shange’s Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter and the way in which purposefully using language is an act of distancing one’s self from the historical narrative of slavery and the chains that identify the black body and black life as without form or distinction: “there’s no words for us (Spyra, 765).” In the same way that language breaks the historical narrative, so does dance. Though Shange distances herself from Yoruba dance because it only upholds one African cultural group, the fact that the dance appears in Black American culture is a victory. The distance between continent of origin and the diaspora is closing. The gap of okra and greens becomes tighter. The arts bridges continents and claims a trajectory of history that was stolen. In this video Shange defines black dance as “how we remember what cannot be said.”
Glissant’s Linguistic Analysis + Movement
Part of the struggle against a single-axis cultural and historical narrative lies in the contestation of power via language, or the creation of a new language marked by struggle against hegemonic paradigms of knowledge and subjectivity. Glissant asserts that a national literature, borne of the “urge for each group to assert itself” (Glissant 99), is an enactment of this struggle. A community goes in search of itself and its subjectivity by creating a literature that gives voice to its beliefs, its memories, its pains etc. In this literature, a new language emerges from the colliding forces of orality – which are, in the case of the Caribbean, found in the phonetics of resistance found in Creole – and the written forms of European languages. Glissant acknowledges a “forced poetics” faced by the Caribbean speaker (specifically by the Martinican) in encountering the tension between French and Creole.
Glissant defines the basis of Creole’s orality as located in the body. Creole mobilizes the body’s reproductive functions that allow African traditions to persist and reappear in the context of the Western Hemisphere, where they are perpetually carried in the body and consciousness of the Caribbean speaker. This logic of reproduction imbues the Black Caribbean body with the power of resistance, which is deployed in the making of national literature. Describing the nature of Creole as conceptual, Glissant is able to illustrate the ways in which linguistic orality is and does as music, in that it embodies collective resistance and is carried across temporal and corporeal bounds. Glissant’s explanations offer insight into the workings of the literary impulse as an alternative to the fragmentation and chaos of Black subjectivities. In giving voice to these suppressed and undermined subjectivities, literature creates the conditions for the persistence and expansion of Black expression.
“Shange’s multilingual poetry puts languages in Relation in order to encourage people to connect in the transnational web of Relation that Glissant envisions.” (Spyra 793). Ntozake Shange produces a national literature that transcends borders by linking languages in the Western Hemisphere. Shange’s work, specifically the choreopoem, is described as “‘an ancient African form’ enriched with influences from European experimental theater and dance” (786). This allows us to view the body and its movements as an extension of language and literature. Thus in Shange’s work we not only see the body reproducing timeless resistance through spoken and language, but also enacting forced poetics in its breath and movement. There is a continuous link then, between knowledge, language, and corporeality.
Shange & New Archival Practices
Our introduction to Shange’s Archives allowed me to theorize archival space and the process of archiving in new ways. Since our session, I have been pondering the significance of Shange’s collection — what makes the archive of a living, black woman, and Barnard alumna, so significant and distinct?
In pondering this question, I was struck by Shannon Miller’s account of the history of archival work and the etymology of the word “archive” from the Greek “arkhe” meaning “magistracy, office, government”. There is a historic relationship between the traditional practice of archiving and maintaining governance and control of access to information. Understanding this relationship is integral to recognizing the unique space and place of the Shange collection.
Bad Girls In Three Parts: Reading “The Black Sexism Debate”
You bad girl
You sad girl
You’re such a dirty bad girl
— Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” (1979)
What correct analysis of this rotten capitalist dragon within which we live will legitimize the wholesale rape of black women by black men that goes on now within every city of this land?
— Audre Lorde, “The Great American Disease,” in “The Black Sexism Debate” issue of The Black Scholar (May/June, 1979)
How are we to read the 1979 special issue of The Black Scholar on the so-called “Black Sexism Debate”? What word in this title is up for discussion? (Hint: It’s the not the “black” part.) What does it mean that we are in the realm of a named dialogue? What does it mean that we have to name this discussion that is always up for debate? How do we confront the seemingly antiquated (read: racist, patriarchal, and biological) language that permeates the occasion for the issue, Robert Staples’s “The Myth of Black Macho: A Response to Angry Black Feminists”?
In this post, I’m not going to rehash any of the arguments from the issue or offer any of my own in part because I can imagine June Jordan in her hazy-beautiful voice (see above) saying, as she does in the opening to “Black Women haven’t ‘Got It All,” “All I have time to say to Robert Staples is this: Are you serious?” (39). Instead, I’m going to present a few provisional fragments as guideposts and entryways into this historical text that embodies such a fascinating affective register. I am totally serious. Read More
The “Greedy” English Language
For this week’s class I read Vanessa Valdes’ article “there is no incongruence here: Hispanic Notes in the Works of Ntozake Shange,” in which she argues that Shange uses the Spanish language and Hispanic imagery to promote a more inclusive picture of the African Diaspora. Valdes believes that Shange challenges her audience’s idea of the diaspora and pushes for a “more ample definition of blackness,” (Valdes, 133). This essay resonated with a discussion I had in another class where we spoke about the “weight” that the English language holds in literature and poetry (Valdes, 132). In this class we are reading Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, in which she italicizes the words in her novel that are not in English. I feel that when an artist writes in English but italicizes words from different languages it automatically others that language and the people who speak it. The very act of italicizing a word makes the letters look foreign compared to everything else. Of course it makes sense to let the reader know that a certain word is not English and therefore may need to be translated, but it makes English seem like the only acceptable language. As English speaking people we often expect and assume that books will be translated into English or written in English, and that any foreign word will be made clear and glossed for our convenience. In my other seminar my professor described the English language and English speaking people as greedy, which I think is somewhat fitting. As English speaking people (especially if it is your first language) we as a whole refuse to be made to feel foreign by the presence of other languages in our texts. I think it is unique and highly intelligent how Shange not only uses Spanish in her poetry, but also never feels the need to qualify the language with italics. Shange places English and Spanish on the same level by refusing to differentiate between the two languages. Valdes explains that “Shange’s readers should be able to read and understand both languages and acknowledge the viability of both, for both narrate the black experience in the Americas,” (Valdes, 132).
overwhelmingly beautiful you
Fanon, “Algeria Unveiled”–Post by Michelle Loo
“A strand of hair, a bit of forehead, a segment of an ‘overwhelmingly beautiful’ face glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train, may suffice to keep alive and strengthen the European’s persistence in his irrational conviction that the Algerian woman is the queen of all women” (43).
A strand of hair
a [bit] of forehead
a segment of an overwhelmingly beautiful face
overwhelmingly beautiful
glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train,
yeh you
may suffice to keep alive / strengthen / reinforce the European’s persistence / irrational conviction that the Algerian woman
the overwhelmingly beautiful you
is
the
queen of all women.
Breaking the quote into several lines emphasize the pace and flow of the train of thoughts. It begins with short observations, “A strand of hair,” “a [bit] of forehead,” a segment of an overwhelmingly beautiful face,” but then the pattern changes to no longer listing an observation but describing what about the observation, “glimpsed in a streetcar or on a train,” alerting the reader that the poem is ready to go somewhere. “yeh you” is the final scream at the reader to pay attention because the following lines are going to be quick and insightful. The next line explains the significance and violence behind the observations listed in the beginning of the poem. It does so in the longest line of the poem with slashes instead of line breaks to separate fragments in order to convey the overwhelmingness of this unraveling of thoughts. I added extra adjectives to this line because the explanation in this line is so important and I wanted the message to be clear, that the colonizer is persistent and aggressive. This is especially important since the tone in the following lines is no longer direct and straightforward.
I feel that including “the overwhelmingly beautiful you” at the end of the poem turns the poem’s observation [European’s persistence to save the Algerian women] into an action. It demonstrates the tactics they use to approach Algerian women, which is direct and flattering. The Algerian is saying “the overwhelmingly beautiful you / is / the / queen of all women,” who wouldn’t want to join a movement that declares this conviction? It seems that Shange uses the rhetorical “you” in her pieces to do just this. It is a powerful tool to “show and not just tell” her point. By including “yeh you” towards the middle of the poem catches the reader off guard, insinuating that, “while you might not realize it right away, but I am talking about you, this is about you”, referring to the descriptors the poem begins with and what the poem is about.
Language ought to be nourishing
we therefore learnt to value words
for their meaning/nuances
“language” waz not a mere string of words/it haz a suggestive power
well beyond the immediate n lexical meaning
our appreciation of the suggestive/magical power of language waz reinforced
by the games we played w words
through riddles/proverbs/transpositions of syllables
or through (nonsensical but) musically arranged
words
So we learnt the music of our language on top of
the “content” (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 11)
Language ought to be nourishing. The shadows of its content feed the memories of a people’s history; its rhythm underscores the music behind morals and symbols. When I think of Shange’s writing, I imagine language that is nourishing through its movement and musicality. In this quote from Ngugi’s Decolonizing the Mind, he writes of the necessity of music/the magic of nuance. Without either, language sits undercooked and static. I felt inspired to re-arrange this passage in the style of Shange because I think the subject resonates with the heart of her writing—language that is good for the mouth, the body and the soul.
I wrote out my interpretation while listening to Charles Mingus’s “Mode D—Trio and Group Dancers”. The rhythm of the piece changes gradually, but sometimes swiftly. Its company helped me imagine when Shange might leave space for a gesture at the end of a phrase. I wanted “words” to be the only word to have its own line. Rhythmically, it felt like a place for a gesture/to exhale. What are “words” (nourishing words) but gestures that symbolize what we value/where we come from/how we want to be remembered?
The original quote reads, “Language was not…It had…” I left the “was” (implicitly) past tense, but changed the “had” to reflect the present. I’d imagine that language was never just “content” for Shange; but language is alive, and has/has always had the “suggestive power” that nourishes a particular experience of culture and history in its vital rejection of colonialist language/narrative.
Later in the chapter “The Language of African Literature”, Ngugi writes, “Learning, for a colonial child, became a cerebral activity and not an emotionally felt experience” (17). This brings to mind a quote from If I can Cook: “Speaking American ain’t necessarily nourishing.” Shange makes her words dance in the spirit of protest. Like Ngugi describes, Shange plays games with the structure and rhythm of language—leaving the audience with food for thought. What is good for the body/what heals the body is a language that rejects colonialist English, and relies on intuition/the sensical nonsensical/the music “on top of the content”. This is a language that nourishes history and culture.
Ngugi, language and colonization
but African languages refused/
to die
dey wud not simply go/
the way of Latin/
to become the fossils for linguistic archeology/
to dig up/ classify/ and argue
about the international conferences
“Decolonizing the Mind,” N’gugi wa Thiongo (p. 23).
Throughout the text Thiong’o reflects on how language can define an individual and their culture. He outlines how writers have grappled with the question of which language they should use and what that choice says about them. It is important that Thiong’o makes it clear that African languages are still thriving and how speaking in one’s native tongue does not prevent one from “belonging to a larger national or continental geography,” (23). Speaking in one’s native tongue is also an act of defiance against imperialism. He continues to say that even when the peasantry and working class were forced to speak imperialist languages they creolized them to fit their own needs. African languages, despite being made second to imperialist languages, have managed to survive and continue to play a role in maintaining African cultures.
I found it difficult to break up the prose in a way that added to the meaning of the text instead of merely fragmenting the lines. I attempted to highlight the determination of African cultures to resist colonialist culture through language. The exercise made me think about what the pauses and breaths in poetry actually do to the consumption of the text. I also found that transforming some of the words into black vernacular did not skew the meaning or the integrity of the text as I thought it might. Using “wud” instead of “would” did not make the text seems any less intelligent or poignant. Overall I found that the task of transforming the prose into Shange style poetry made the text almost easier to digest. Without periods or commas the words all seem to flow together without hesitation or clear stops.