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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Reading Zaki: Week 5

by Melissa 10 Comments

It’s so magic folks feel their own ancestors coming up out of the earth to be in the realms of their descendants; they feel the blood of their mothers still flowing in them survivors of the diaspora.

Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

In revisiting Vanessa Valdes’ Oshun’s Daughters, I have been able to re-engage with Afro-spirituality as it appears in Shange’s work, specifically Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo. Valdés illustrates the ways in which each protagonist is associated with a Yoruba or Dahomean deity, sometimes representing more than one entity at a time. These depictions of Afro-spiritualist deities are heterogenous in that they activate a range of traditions manifested in African-descent communities across the western hemisphere. Shange does not limit the characters’ embodiments of Afro-spiritualism to singular practices; at times, we see the Oshun of Santeria, the Gullah-Geechee Blue Sunday, or the different forms of Erzulie in Haitian Vodou. In this effort, Shange is honoring the transcendent quality of Afro-spiritualism, in its limitless iterations across communities and cultural contexts.  

The Holiness of a Cookbook

by Nicole 1 Comment

While reading both Shange and Mae’s cookbooks I took time to think about the ways in which cooking is important in my family. The first thing that came to mind is the cookbook that my mother keeps which contains recipes from my grandmother and great grandmother and some of our current favorite dishes. To be honest, my mother really does not do too much cooking, my grandmother was the cook in our household until she passed away. My grandmother is no longer here to cook for us, so having a catalogue of her recipes is like preserving the memory of her existence in our household. Her recipes are proof that she did not leave us empty, but left behind ways of nourishing our bodies. This way my grandmother can continue to fill our stomachs despite her not physically being here. Now my mother’s cookbook, our cookbook, is not the same book my Nana (great-grandmother) used. My mother has updated the book itself, but the recipes on cards and sometimes scraps of paper are still the same. Shange writes that “[c]ooking is a way of insisting on living,” I also think that recipes themselves are a way our elders insist on continuing to live with us after their passing (If I Can Cook/ You Know God Can, Ntzoake Shange, 70). This is how we refuse the idea that black culture is static and was ruptured during the Middle Passage. The fact that black people can pass down recipes and see the similarities in traditional dishes among different peoples of color prove that “[w]e are not folklore,” (Shange, 32).

It resonated with me when I read that Mae does not cook with measurements and relies on the feel of things. Reading this reminded me of what I’ve seen in my own home.

And when I cook, I never measure or weigh anything. I cook by vibration. I van tell by the look and smell of it. Most of the ingredients in this book are aproximate. Some of the recipes that people gave me list the amounts, but for my part, I just do it by vibration.  Different strokes for different folks. Do your thing your way. 

(Vibration Cooking, Verta Mae, xxiii)

In my family’s cooking all of the recipes from my Nana and many of those from my grandmother are without certified measurements. Many describe using a tea cup as a measure. Now, what size tea cup, I have no idea. I believe that is what Mae describes as “[d]different strokes for different folks” cooking,” (Mae, xiii). Deciding to not use measurements also makes cooking a learning experience instead of following someone else’s formula. I believe that this is how the act of cooking becomes nourishment in itself, that making your own food is akin to the magical-like home remedies in Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. Not only is the food nourishing, but the process of cooking and creating on your own terms is liberating.

 

Below are some photos of recipes from my family’s cookbook:

 

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(My great grandmother’s recipe with measurements adapted by my mother)

 

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(My grandmother’s recipe)

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(My Aunt Gwen’s Recipe)

 

 

 

Shange’s Sentimental Fiction(s), Healing: The Public vs The Private

by Dania 0 Comments

Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo can be described as a Sentimental Fiction, a word that was used by Rafael Vicente whilst in conversation about his work  “White Love: Census and Melodrama in the U.S. Colonizationof the Philippines” and “Colonial Domesticity: Engendering Race at the Edge of Empire, 1899-1912,” which Vicente framed as fictional work that is very political in that it intentionally uses its plot, its characters, its location to convey and represent structures of power within specific context. And thus does critically and analytically engages the everyday life within structures that seem invisible. For example, Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo focuses on the politics of black girlhood and black woman, the politics of class and the manners in which it affects black girlhood and black womanhood. The sentimental fiction higlights that personal is political. It does so by using the work of literature to tell historical and contemporary stories. It foreshadows the difficulty in compartmentalizing or differentiating the difference between the real and the imaginative. And Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo does that. As Indigo transitions or realizes her “womanhood”, “Indigo stood by the door watching this bloodletting. Silent. Pretty Man surveyed the situation. Put the evilest eye he could gather up on Indigo, who startled under the power of his gaze. That was all it took. The men slowly came back to themselves. Looked Puzzled” (38), there is an interruption, an unwanted interruption that, that enables and forces Indigo to see her womanhood in the way that her mother describe. Manhood, steps in and gawk at blackgirlhood, and the black girl is forced to see her womanhood, in the midst of her girlhood, an interpellation.

In addition to speaking to the interpellation of black girlhood to womanhood, Shange touches on the politics of seeking healing and resolution within the public versus private In Indigo’s personal spell “To rid oneself of the scent of evil”, the spell is very individualize, which is a very radical and non-binary way of think of healing. With the personal, the phrase that states “Violence or purposeful revenge should not be considered in most cases. Only during wars of national liberation, to restore the honor of the race, or to redress calamitous personal & familial trauma, may we consider brute force/annihilation”, following the spell makes a clear distinction about how-whether violence should be used, in the defense of the race publicly- matter of the community should be addressed. Which leads me to question to efficacy of having a divide between the public and the private when black girlhood and womanhood is jeopardized?

 

Songs I was listening as read this week’s reading:

Nina Simone- My Father

Nina Simone- I shall be released

Nina Simone- Blackbird (cover)

 

 

photo/audio essays on Santería and Gullah/Geechee culture

by Sophia 3 Comments

Audio: Sacred Rhythms of Cuban Santería
produced by Olavo Alén Rodríguez (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1995), 1 hour

On Contemporary Cuban Practice of Santería
Photographed and captioned by Phil Clarke Hill

 

Shadows of the Gullah Geechee
Photographed by Pete Marovich
Captioned by Jordan G. Teicher

Black Girls are Magic: Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo

by Nia 0 Comments

I’m never been more confident in identifying as a) witch b) blessed c) magical than I do after reading Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo. 

Black Girls are Magic.

Cooking, nurturing others is magic. Women gathering together is magical. Women loving and supporting each other is magical. Affirming oneself is magic. Loving yourself and respecting to be loved is rare and magnificent.

Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo represent three types of magic which pervade Black women’s lives.

Sassafras embodies creation. She finds her gift early. She’s a weaver. Yet, she lets private school and the influence of her lover, Mitch devalue the worth of her craft. The men in her life try to name her magic, the magic of Black women. They try to create the Black woman that they think Sassafras is in her, and for awhile she lets them with little, sporadic protest. She keeps trying to write, though it doesn’t come naturally. She keeps trying to be their idea of the artist, their idea of the Black women. But her writing continues to explore weaving, her mother and her past. Without knowing it, Sassafras uses her writing to bring herself back to weaving, back to stereotypically feminine creation. She shows that even performing the role society expects of you is magic if done by your own choice, if done freely. She can bring beauty, generosity, and freedom into the world because she chooses to. That is magical.

Cypress embodies translation and transconfiguration. Through her body Cypress is able to speak to the past, present, and future. She is able to interpret the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly of the body. She can read people through their bodies, take in their messages and send back her own. She is able to blend the things she wants in the world through her body. She is able to reconcile the things she wants in her life that she struggles to reconcile otherwise through dance and her body’s expression. When she accepts her body for all it can do and all it cannot, she is able to utilize her magic.

Indigo embodies birth and rebirth. For a very young age it is clear Indigo can conjure and create life where there is none. Her dolls, carefully and painstakingly fashioned by her, have personalities. When she believes she’s outgrown them she lays them “to rest.” Her violin playing revives the deepest, most ancestral parts of her listeners. It evokes the pain and joy of them and all who came before them. As she ages, she uses her powers to bring “free” Black  children into the world; children who come into the world unconquered and remain so until their deaths. Her magic is what keeps Black women afloat. She can call on the spirits to protect those who live and make women honors those who have passed. Her magic is regenerative.

Inter-generational Communion: On Mothering and Friendship

by Amanda 1 Comment

“I see the street play, the tap dance; I see the double Dutch stuff. It tells a story about how girls pass on skills to girls. You don’t learn double Dutch from your teachers or your parents, but you learn it from your girlfriends. And it’s about that kind of sharing and that trust and that passing along of information and wisdom and ability and excellence.” – Eva Yaa Asantewaa

sassafrass cypress indigo

Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982)

In talking about Camille A. Brown’s Black Girl: Linguistic Play—a show seeking to counter simplistic and overused portrayals of black female experiences in terms of strength and resilience by presenting black female experiences through nuanced understandings of play and protest, friendship and girlhood—Eva Yaa Asantewaa highlights the centrality of sharing to girlhood. I’ve included Brown’s work because it’s bewitchingly honest and glorious, and because I think it helps a great deal to connect mothering, the nature of black girl friendships, and ancestral inheritance—all themes that appear throughout Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.

Broadly, mothering is about nurturing, guiding, healing and cultivating gifts. While Aunt Haydee’s mothering manifests as teaching Indigo about “giving birth, curing women folks & their loved ones” and also making space for Indigo to play her fiddle, Indigo is seen mothering Aunt Haydee and others through storytelling (“Indigo told Aunt Haydee her own stories” 221), and soothing mothers and children with her fiddle. Not only are these acts reflections of motherhood, they also speak to the nature of friendship. You learn double dutch from your girlfriends. There’s a constant exchange between these women, these girls that ultimately conflates motherhood and friendship in a way that defines inter-generational communion.

“Aunt Haydee pleaded with Blue Sunday to ‘Please, give this child life, please, give this child the freedom you know.’ Then Indigo would play her fiddle, however the woman wanted” (223).

The above quote was extremely restorative and interesting in that although neither of these women//these girls are bearers of children; their participation alone in the process of bringing life into the world renders them mothers. Further, having the power to participate in the birth of people of color, and having the access to the history and thus the ability to call on ancestors for help is a gift. This moment where members of different generations (Blue Sunday, Aunt Haydee, Indigo, and the new child) come together becomes a recipe for ancestral inheritance. One that can look like playing double dutch, gaining the ability to move the sea, healing folks and their loved ones, and hands holding onto voices of slaves singing out of walls.

“The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness. Now they sang out from the walls, pulling Indigo toward them. Indigo ran her hands along the walls, to get the song, getta hold to the voices” (49).

 

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan)

Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan). Found on camilleabrown.org