Header Image - The Worlds of Ntozake Shange
The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

Tag Archives

11 Articles

Healing Justice: Feeling Shange

by Hossain 0 Comments

Yesterday, October 1st, 2019, was one of the most unique experiences of my life. It is still hard to put it in to words, what I felt in Barnard’s James Room last night, but it was Shange. Is that possible? To use her name as an adjective? It was Shange. Healing Justice, in a way, is Shange and her work. That’s quite some pressure to put on a singular woman, though, but she is Shange. Last night, Ebony Noelle Golden described her as a “firestar” and a firestar, she is. Last night, the James Room was decolonized for two and a half hours. I was lucky enough to be in that room last night, where we were all invited to participate in ceremony, veneration, and prostration to Shange. I know myself to be a monotheist, but Shange is not short of a goddess. Perhaps, in some way, her spirit last night, was sharing energies with Sechita, and her ephemeral presence was felt. I was in a meditative state. I keep thinking zen, but that’s not the right word. It was meditative, perhaps, even religious. I am a person that believes in the exchange of energies, but is often skeptical of spirits. Perhaps it is my own fear? But yesterday, I spoke to Shange. I felt her there, and I was unafraid. My mind was white matter, white light, blank, and present. She granted me that gift–to be present. I felt myself, a different part of me wake up- Samaha Hossain.

I’m posting this almost a whole month after attending the healing justice event. I often write when I feel moved and I wrote that quickly one afternoon when I felt compelled to put my thoughts and feelings on paper. I made the decision to publish the unedited and unfiltered version of my thoughts about the Healing Justice event. I am inspired by Shange and her philosophy of dismantling and using the oppressive English language in ways that work best for our tongues and our bodies. The thoughts are above are my own, untouched by the conventions of academic expectations and without the pressure of explaining my feelings and consciousness to make sense to another. In essence, that night and being surrounded by Shange and her works granted me this feeling of entitlement and empowerment over my intellectual property. I have to say, there’s something quite satisfying about seeing your name follow a quote, it feels right.

As I conclude this post, I felt a lot that night. And something I have come to realize is that words won’t do it justice. It was an embodied and internalized experience. But it was one that made me think. It made me reach out to my mentors and loved ones who have supported me throughout my time at Barnard and reminded me to show them more love. It made me reconnect with my faith and want to explore different sects. We ended the ceremony that night in communal song. I remember swaying my body, closing my eyes, and basking in my presence of mind. But healing and song reminded me of the Sufi sect of Islam, which is different from what I practice. Sufism is the sect more involved with mysticism and music in prayer; the whirling dervishes of Turkey may be a popular representation of this. I bring this up because a Sufi song kept coming to mind as I sat through the ceremony. Kun Faya Kun is a Sufi song that was popularized by a Bollywood movie. I have attached the link below so that folks may listen, if they have the time. Kun Faya Kun translated from Arabic to English, means, “to be.” It means to exist and manifest oneself in the world as a being as per Allah’s will. To me, it also means to be present and conscious of your existence and the might of the universe, which I think fit perfectly with what I was feeling at the healing justice event.

As I stood in the shower that night, I put my phone by the window. I turned my volume on high, and hit play on Kun Faya Kun. I closed my eyes and swayed once more as the steam and droplets of water took over my body and filled my air with song and life. White light, blank space, my natural high. I felt it once more. I felt her and Him and myself.

Simply, I was.

Reading Zake: Vamo Hablar Ingles

by Ortiz 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.

 

 

SHANGE IS AN INSPIRATION!

by Perry O'Parsons 1 Comment

 

I found Ntozake Shange’s talk on black dance to be totally inspiring. I was practically on the edge of my seat the entire time. I found that during both the talk and the lunch she radiated an energy that seemed to include her listeners. Made me hear the music. Made me want to get up and dance. Made me want to get up and do something. Make something happen. That is the feeling I look for all around me and I think it is what makes her writing and her words so affective and infectious. The way she writes reaches out and places the words in the readers mouth.

I had never read her work before taking this course. Her work is freeing! It reminds me that writing can take so many forms. Letters and words are a malleable substance in her hands that can take shapes I have never even dreamed of. And not just words, but dance. And music. Sights and sounds and movements, everything, is just a something to be shaped into whatever you want. Whatever you feel. Not to say that it’s easy or without effort. She is brilliant. She is a master of what she does. But her work does not live by rules simply because someone says they are so, she has actively and effortfully remade language to push against those rules.

The impression I am left with from her visit, is that she is a woman constantly in motion, constantly in action. Even when a disability has restricted her motion. Seeing her as she is now, still alive and spirited, and having read the work she had produced throughout her life, I am inspired to achieve that level of action/motion!

 

This picture reminds me of that kind of action/movement/motion/creation that I’m talking about!

A Daughter’s Geography- A Call for Unity

by Makaria Yami 1 Comment

The poem that stood out to me from the readings this week is Bocas: A Daughter’s Geography. Colonization and the struggle between the powerful and the powerless is something that I often think about and study in a lot of my classes. However, reading Shange’s poem gave me a new perspective on the matter. Amidst the horrors and aftermath of colonization, Shange finds a way to create unity and hope amongst all those who have suffered under imperialist powers:

 

“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” (A Daughter’s Geography).

 

Throughout her poem, Shange repeats these lines utilizing different cities and countries. She writes about how these geographic locations are different from each other, often speaking different languages. However, they are bonded by the same struggle against imperialist powers, or “the same old men,” as Shange puts it. While the struggle for liberation is an uphill battle, those who are suffering can draw strength from the knowledge that others across the globe are in the fight with them, which is an empowering and beautiful message.

When I first saw Brixton amongst the regions she was talking about, I was wondering why Shange would choose to put a district within the United Kingdom, an imperialist force, within the list. However, I learned that a large percentage of the population in Brixton is of Afro-Caribbean descent. Additionally, in 1981, Brixton was undergoing riots as a result of social and economic problems. This poem by Shange was published in 1983, meaning that the Brixton riots were most likely on her mind. The way that Shange weaves through the globe connecting places of struggle leads me to believe that liberation requires a united global effort.

I’m currently reading Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis. In her book, Davis talks about the “tweets of Palestinian activists used to provide advice for protestors in Ferguson, on how to deal with tear gas” (42). Palestinians and Black Americans “cannot speak the same language,” however their shared struggle allows them to be empowered by each other, which is the point that I believe Shange was trying to make in her poem.

Reading Zake Week 2: “i talk to myself” from Nappy Edges

by Sophia 12 Comments

i can’t quite remember how many questions or journalists or people have happened to me in the last year. i can’t even remember everything i’ve said. i know i tried to convey my perceptions of the world, of men & women, music & language, as clearly as i cd, but poets who talk too much can trip over their own syllables. can become absurd. like the time i told this woman that the most important thing that ever happened to me was my tail-cutting party. or the time i started crying in the middle of a question cuz the person waz so nasty to me i cd no longer speak. he said i had no right to exist/ so i said/ go speak to a rightfully existing person, a white man, maybe. that’s not good press.

…

tz: well. how do you explain loving some men who write & some men who play music & some men who are simply lovable, when yr work for almost three years has been entirely woman-centered?

i can do a lot of things. we all can. women haveta. i waz not able to establish the kind of environment i that my work needed when i read with men all the time. you haveta remember there’s an enormous ignorance abt women’s realities in our society. we ourselves suffer from a frightening lack of clarity abt who we are. my work attempts to ferret out what i know & touch in a woman’s body. if i really am committed to pulling the so-called personal outta the realm of non-art. that’s why i have dreams & recipes, great descriptions of kitchens & handiwork in sassafrass, cypress, & indigo. that’s why in for colored girls…i discuss the simple reality of going home at nite, of washing one’s body, looking out the window with a woman’s eyes. we must learn our common symbols, preen them and share them with the world. the readings i usedta do with david henderson, conyus, bob chrisman, paul vane, ton cusan, roberto vargas & all the others at the coffee gallery, the intersection, & s.f. state were quite high, but the readings at the women’s studies center, with the third world women’s collective, international woman’s day affairs, with the shameless hussy poets, these were overwhelmingly intense & growing experiences for me as a woman & as a poet.

the collective recognition of certain realities that are female can still be hampered, diverted, diluted by a masculine presence. yes, i segregated my work & took it to women. much like i wd take fresh water to people stranded in the mojave desert. i wdnt take a camera crew to observe me. i wdnt ask the people who had never known thirst to come watch the thirsty people drink.

On Variant Spellings

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

131230_LIFE_Whoa.jpg.CROP.promo-mediumlargeWhen training students, teachers tend to stress standardization in spelling and grammar (remember all of those spelling tests?), but languages travel and some of its movements result in multiple valid spellings of the same world (think for example of differences between British & American English, i.e. “colour/color.”). Such differences are called “variant spellings.”

After Paulette Williams remade herself into Ntozake Shange, she evidently

Books for borrowing

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

From Ellington Was Not A Street, a children’s book based on the “Mood Indigo” poem in *A Daughter’s Geography*. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson.

Hi all,

While you described your future projects, I suggested some books that might be helpful for you.  Given the library/archive move, I’ve placed these books in a box in the Barnard Center For Research on Women (BCRW) for informal loan. PLEASE TAKE CARE OF MY BOOKS. Some of them I’ve had for 20+ years and others are just difficult to get.  Most of you might find Neal Lester’s Ntozake Shange : A Critical Study of the Plays useful. It is very thoroughly documented and the bibliography/notes might lead you to some interesting primary sources. There are several books on Black Women’s Health and the Black Arts Movement. (FYI, I am also loading items in our group Zotero folder as I find things that are related to your project.)

Bracey, John H., Sonia Sanchez, and James Edward Smethurst, eds. SOS/Calling All Black People : A Black Arts Movement Reader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014.

Clarke, Cheryl. “After Mecca” : Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2005.

Collins, Lisa Gail, and Margo Nathalie Crawford, eds. New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, c2006.

hooks, bell. Sisters of the Yam : Black Women and Self-Recovery. Boston, MA: South End Press, c1993.

Lester, Neal A. Ntozake Shange : A Critical Study of the Plays /. New York : Garland Pub., 1995.

Shange, Ntozake. Coretta Scott. New York: Katherine Tegen Books, 2011.

———. Ellington Was Not a Street. 1 edition. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004.

———. Freedom’s a-Callin Me. New York: Amistad, 2012.

———. Lost in Language and Sound: Or, How I Found My Way to the Arts; Essays (audio Book). Unabridged edition. North Kingstown, RI: AudioGO, 2012.

———. The Sweet Breath of Life : A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family. New York: Atria Books, 2004.

———. We Troubled the Waters. New York: Amistad, 2009.

Smethurst, James Edward. The Black Arts Movement : Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c2005.

Van Deburg, William L. New Day in Babylon : The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, c1992.

Villarosa, Linda, ed. Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. New York: HarperPerennial, 1994.

White, Evelyn, ed. The Black Women’s Health Book : Speaking for Ourselves. Seattle, Wash: Seal, c1994.

nia ashley in reflection

by Nia 0 Comments

In my posts I tend to close read Shange’s text to extract themes about the citizens of the African diaspora. I pick up to three themes present in the text we read that week and combine Shange’s text with my own interpretations and opinions of those topics. I’ve raised the issue of the imbalanced politics in interracial intimacy and how its perceived, the importance of poets as orators in the African diaspora, and how Shange “reconstructs language and culture to allow colonized and oppressed people, particularly Black people, to express emotions, discuss experiences, and commiserate with others.” As the semester has progressed, I’ve gotten freer with my forms, more willing to digress from the straight analytical form and embrace more of Shange’s poetics. The one thing I do want to revisit in my work is actually not in my posts, but in my “nappy edges” presentation. I feel that I raised some ideas about the projects and goals of Shange’s work that are worth revisiting and exploring.

I often struggle to write a post on the days that I did not fully connect with the text, especially before class. Reading Shange in my isolation I am often confused or conflicted, I don’t know what to think, what I think, or how to articulate it. It is only after class that I begin to understand the text and developed concrete and coherent thoughts about the work. I think that is visible in the posts I did for texts I did not connect with as strongly as others.

reviving and reactivating

by Kiani 1 Comment

In pondering the influence and impact of the Black Arts Movement on young writers across the United States– the magazines, writing collectives, newspapers and newsletters that were born of the movement, I can’t help but recall something Ntozake Shange mentioned about her own writing process. She talked about about how there was a period in her life when she could only write poems when she was in love — that her process existed in her relationships with lovers. Her process didn’t change until she had her daughter– her experience of love and loving shifted from an external process to an internal process– the nurturing of one’s own creation. A nurturing that would come to include introducing her daughter to the world of art she helped to build and foster. While this intimate bit of her life may seem removed from one’s considerations about the spread of information, it is so indicative to me about the nature of art– creating and sharing. I become wholly aware of the constant shifting and mindfulness that is necessary in creating work of oneself with the intent that it will touch others.

I’ve spent some time considering last week’s rereading of ‘A Daughter’s Geography,’–comparing it to works like ‘for colored girls’ and ‘nappy edges,’ and considering the Black Arts Movement and Decolonization efforts of the time. What they all have have in common is Shange, herself, of course. Shange’s passion for telling stories and for hearing stories drove her across the country to engage with the creative process. In participating in her work and understanding the history of it we have revived the conversation and included ourselves. We have reactivated an archive, if you will.

 

We didn’t have time in class to flesh out a question I posed during my presentation that I think speaks to this idea of reactivating and re-visioning the “archive.” The question read:

The Black Arts Movement — collectives, publications, aesthetic tradition, the prioritizing of the Black experience — spread across the country over the course of ten years when prominent figures Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange and others migrated to the West Coast to teach, perform, and create.

How would we envision such an exchange today considering the possibilities of technology? Could we compare this spread of information to movements today, or not?

I can’t help but giggle because this act that I’m performing right now — contributing knowledge to a blog; an online platform for sharing with others, is almost an answer to my question. I consider current movements that have been born of the Internet, or gained considerable following via the Internet, that have garnered worldwide attention– Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, Occupy, etc. and wonder if they are comparable to something like the Black Arts Movement– I wonder if we’re writing ourselves into “history books” so to say. And further ponder what that even means… If we are to change conceptions of an archive by understanding its carceral origins can’t we also re conceptualize how we create history by engaging with history.. in the fullest way?

http://marcheleann.tumblr.com/post/124886605809/do-not-let-these-names-be-swept-under-the-rug

A Living Archive: Meeting Zake

by Nia 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