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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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this midnight oil / Rewriting Cherríe Moraga

by Ortiz 0 Comments

we write letters to each other / incessantly / across a kitchen table / third wrld feminist strategy / is plotted.

we tlk long hours / into the night / it is when this midnight oil is burning /inthoseafterhours / that we secretly reclaim our goddesses / and our female-identified / cultural tradition

“i got myself home, / lit me some candles / … / put on sum

dinah and / aretha” (rushin)

 

In “Between the Lines: On Culture, Class, and Homophobia” in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, Cherríe Moraga describes the limitations of a strictly racialized reading of a woman’s experience. In this passage, Moraga describes the act of turning towards each other for “strength and sustenance” (102) as we search for our desire to have “all [our] sisters of color actively identified and involved as feminists” (102). Adopting Shange’s poetic style of writing, I chose this passage to emphasize the act of coming together through mediums of letters, music, or the spoken word. By deconstructing the original structure, including the quote by Rushin, I can now read Moraga and Rushin’s writing in the way it makes me feel; the words now dance and move and pause in a way that expresses a collectiveness, a warmth inherent in what we desire “third wrld feminist strategy” to be. It is “to write letters / to tlk long hours / put on sum dinah and / aretha” that we move past fractured images of the self, where our “whole” identities can meld into a single movement that acknowledges and is fueled by this “midnight oil,” this difference, that is learned through these mediums.

 

The Meaning Behind my Archive Find: Blogpost #7

by Charista 0 Comments

Cup coasters I found in the Shange Archives. I reflected on each word on every coaster and realized their relationship to Shange’s work.

 

I found these cup coasters in the Ntozake Shange Archives. The box I found them in said that they were found in Shange’s home when her belongings were collected. As soon as I saw them, many thoughts ran through my mind. The words on the coasters read: consciousness, nonviolence, homeland, realization, environment, women, the journey, values, fulfillment, obstacles, hope, and freedom. 

Each word is a theme that is shown in a plethora of her works and pieces. Perhaps she used these coasters as her inspiration when she wrote? The coasters were, in fact, found laying around her house. Maybe she used a different coaster for each piece she wrote and tried to work that word/theme into it? 

These coasters make me think about each word and how every word is a significant and powerful theme that is ever-present in Shange’s pieces. The more obvious themes, to me, are the words that are almost self-explanatory: environment, women, the journey, values, fulfillment, obstacles, hope, and freedom. 

For example, let’s look at “consciousness, “realization,” and “homeland.” Consciousness and realization can be interpreted as “awareness” — awareness/realization of one’s self, awareness/realization of one’s body, awareness/realization of one’s surroundings, and awareness/realization of one’s capabilities– something that Shange often explores in pieces like Nappy Edges and for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf.

“Homeland” reminds me of Shange’s appreciation for black culture and tradition. A powerful underlying theme of Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, and in many of her pieces in Lost in Language in Sound, is the significance of cultural tradition in the lives of contemporary black people. For example, my previous blogpost that talked about how Shange makes it evident that the portrayal and depiction of cultural heritage strongly affects the identity and character development of Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo, partly because of their mother’s influence. As I continue to reflect on the words on these coasters, I will think of deeper meanings and ways these themes connect to Shange’s life, as well as my life, going forward in the semester.

 

manifestations of lorde’s erotic within Nappy Edges

by Johnson 1 Comment

“the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that the sensation is enough” (Lorde, 54)

“When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, or history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives”(Lorde, 55).

“Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluation those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives” (Lorde, 57)

 

What makes Audre Lorde’s text, “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” such a compelling text for me every time I read it, is her capacity to isolate the concept of “the erotic” found within all of us and clearly break down its power and its uses. Every time I read this text, I can single handedly point out manifestations of the erotic within my life, and ways that my surroundings confuse the erotic for what she refers to as “the pornographic” (Lorde, 54) and perpetuates it daily. 

In my reading selections of Shange’s Nappy Edges, her acute knowledge and acceptance of the erotic within her work shines throughout the piece. A collection of poetry and prose poetry, I find Shange in assessing and communicating the erotic often makes a cleverly biting attack to that which doesn’t serve us—the pornographic. Specifically looking at the poem, “wow… yr just like a man!”, Shange chronicles the experiences of a female poet in a male dominated poetry space, who was initially revered by male poets because of her abstraction from “female” things in her work, until one day she exclaims, “i’ve decided to wear my ovaries on my sleeve/ raise my poems on my milk/ & count my days by the flow of my mensis” (Shange, 16). What makes this moment such a wonderful example of a woman leaning into the erotic is not really rooted in its clearly feminine references, it’s instead to me in her choice of looking within herself and rooting her medium of expression within what moves her. That is powerful. And it is just that practice in speaking to what moves her, that Shange employs within all of her works but particularly Nappy Edges. For some reason, I felt the most connected to Shange as a young woman within this reading of her selections. I saw and felt her throughout all of her poems, and I feel that connection is rooted in her level of comfort with expressing the erotic in her poems. 

What I find most wonderful about the connection between Lorde and Shange’s understanding of “the erotic” is their shared experience and understanding of the intimate nature poetry and the erotic. Lorde finds little difference between “writing a good poem and moving into the sunlight against the body of a woman [she] loves” (58), and Shange believes that “a poem shd fill you up with something…a poem shd happen to you like cold water or a kiss” (24). It is in that understanding of the erotic that makes their work so poignant and timeless. 

 

a practice in being present: a reflection on the Healing Justice Shange Event

by Johnson 1 Comment

Something I’ve been in deep rumination about this year is the amount of time I spend outside of the present in my daily life. A Pisces child, I’ve always been prone to dissociation from my reality into lands of my own creation. However, as college became a more tangible part of my life, I find myself so often preoccupied with anxiety-ridden thoughts of the future that I often fail to be properly present in spaces. This lack of consistent presence only hinders me from properly acknowledging and addressing issues that arise in my life in real time, and I am left often in rumination of particular life events weeks and sometimes even months later. This delay in my experiencing of self, has filled me with much consternation of recent especially as I get older and further develop and explore parts of myself. 

This semester, however, I’ve begun to realize the acute importance and power in presence and have taken measures to intentionally include practices that allow me to feel completely within a space. What made the “Emergency Care of Wounds That Cannot Be Seen: Healing Justice & Ntozake Shange” event such a transformative and healing moment for me was  how present everyone was, and was allowed to be. Although it was about reflecting, honoring, and thanking Ms. Shange for what she has contributed to our individual and collective lives, I find that it was as much about us as it was about her. The configuration of the room being a collection of chairs placed in a circle surrounding Shange’s altar, emphasized that it was just as much about seeing and appreciating her as much as it seeing each other, experiencing these moments as a collective. Within their expressions of gratitude to Shange, Cara Page, Ebony Noelle Golden, and Tiffany Lenoi Jones brought so much life into the space, while also challenging us to interrogate our positionalities and the ways in which it influences the amounts of space we feel entitled to take up. They stood to remind us that the words and impacts of Shange belong just as much to us as it does to them, and we shouldn’t fear the things that may arise in our spirits when in Western academic spaces. Although I find it a difficult and jarring feat to express myself and feelings whenever I feel them arise within the confines of this institution, I do value the reminder that I am allowed to take up as much space as possible.

A particular statement that I took away from this event that I feel is applicable not only to this course but the larger trajectory of my life’s work, was Ebony’s statement in regard to Shange, “I am a daughter of her imagination.” In a world where Black Women were habitually misunderstood, compartmentalized, oversimplified, and violated, Shange saw our inherent value and created worlds where we are central, multidimensional, human, and HEARD. It is in that acknowledgment and insistence on making sure through writing that we know that we are heard and not alone that her indelible impact lies. 

Since coming to college, I’ve stopped writing poetry as much as I used to. What used to be an outlet for me to interrogate my feelings in real time, and allow myself moments of presence, had almost completely disappeared. However, last night I felt not only mobilized but that it was some sort of duty of mine to chronicle my thoughts and experiences in writing, if not for the healing of others, for the healing of myself. As Suzan Lori-Parks stated in her play, The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, “You should write it down because if you don’t write it down then they will come along and tell the future that we did not exist” (243). We exist, and we are inherently valuable and have a duty to remind and heal ourselves if not through writing through collective gathering, and it was this event that drove this point in for me.

 

Thank you Professor Hall and Professor Miller. Thank you Vani Natarajan. Thank you Cara Page, Ebony Noelle Golden, and Tiffany Lenoi Jones. Thank you members of the Shange Worlds Healing Committee. And most of all Thank you Ms. Shange for all of your efforts in making sure we are seen, heard, and can heal.

 

“A Dying Colonialism” and its ties to “Porque tu no m’entrende”- Chelsea Blogpost #1

by Chelsea A. 1 Comment

Every rejected veil disclosed to the eyes of colonialists horizons

until then forbidden

piece by piece- the flesh of Algeria laid bare

Every veil that fell,

every body that became liberated from the traditional embrace of the haïk–

every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier–

was a negative expression,

of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself,

and was accepting the rape of the colonizer.

Algerian society– with every abandoned veil,

seemed to express its willingness

and attend to the master’s school,

and to decide to change its habits-

under the occupier’s direction and patronage.

-Algeria Unveiled, “A Dying Colonialism” by Frantz Fanon (42-43)

Reading this passage by Frantz Fanon captured my attention in the way that Fanon details the impact of colonialism on the women in Algeria under France’s rule. The pressures that many Algerian women were faced with between what was their normal ways of dressing and what the native culture accepted, versus what the infiltration of European colonialism deemed restrictive and having tp adapt to the new culture. This passage has added onto my already existing knowledge of what life was like for many African nations under the rule of European powers. And these restrictions expanded beyond the continent as well. Even during the times of slavery and Jim Crow, black women were (and still are) subjected to the European standard of beauty. The way that white women looked and dressed was to be envied and copied.

It’s interesting to see that the pressures of fitting into the societies that white people have crafted, is a dilemma that women of color have been facing for over 400 years now. What was normal for women prior to European contact is now seen as uncultured and barbaric. When white people come into a society and try to change what was already there, it seems that what they bring to a country and its culture is the “right way” to do things. When the European standard of beauty is forced upon women of color, we tend to doubt ourselves and eventually give into the standards. In the case of the Algerian women, the decision to take off the haïk and wear less clothing is like accepting defeat and allowing the colonizer to dictate how women should be allowed to dress. Anything that is traditional is barbaric and “limits” the rights of women.

As Shange says in “Porque tu no m’entrende?”, we must “break through the grids of colonial contrivance and discover who has truly been round and about us, who is round and about us”. This is how I relate both of these examples to my own life. As a curvy black woman with type 4 natural hair living in America, I still face these colonial restraints that stemmed from my great great grandmothers all the way down to me. If one thing has not changed, it’s the fact that we all dealt with the pressures of the European standard of beauty. It causes you to doubt yourself. How will people think of me when my hair is in its natural state? Am I less desirable because I am not on the thinner side of the weight spectrum? Am I not worthy enough because my skin is darker? Should I become something that I am not? These are the questions that I am faced with as I walk through this world. One thing for certain that I have learned from both texts is that the European standard of beauty has always been there, but it is now my job to break the grids of colonial contrivance and love me for who I am.

Shange in many words

by Aissata Ba 1 Comment

In this week’s post, I wanted to talk about the theme of blackness as shown in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo, however due to the current events, I want to write about something else instead. Today, Shange was found to have peacefully passed away in her sleep. I had the greatest honor this year to meet one of the most inspirational black writers/poets out there. Ntozake Shange was a woman with a very powerful presence and ability to motivate people. An ability to guide, inform and teach others. She had love for humanity and her work reflected that. As I had stated before, I never heard about Shange until coming to Barnard, never read a single work of hers until taking this class. However, reading a few of her works has given me a platform, motivation and desire to find my voice in the thing I do on the daily.

As Shange stated, “Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.”  A woman is unbreakable when she finds her power in her voice. Shange found her voice, her power and motivated others to find their’s. She’s a reminder of those people who see the world in a different way, who are perhaps misunderstood by others because of it but still manage to manifest the best out of people.

Ntozake Shange never stopped to remind us to love and appreciate ourselves and the people around us. She never stopped or allowed anyone to stop her from being heard. Her work has and will continue to show me the importance and power voice has, especially as a woman of color. Though she is no longer with us, her influence and work will forever remain. Rest in Power!!!!

Updated: Blaxploitation Manic Pixie Dream Girl

by Asha Futterman 4 Comments

In today’s culture, a repetitive caricature is the “manic pixie dream girl.” She shows up in romantic comedies and dramas and young adult novels. She is Zooey Deschanel in 500 days of summer, Natalie Portman in Garden State, Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine on the Spotless Mind, every major female character in John Green’s novels. The manic pixie dream girl is always white and small, she is always  beautiful in “non conventional way,” her main trait is “quirky.” She appeals to men because she is different than the other girls: deeper, more interesting, or doesn’t like to shop. In Sassafras Cypress and Indigo, Indigo seems like the Blaxploitation manic pixie dream girl. She doesn’t really seem like a real child: she is a 12 year old making poetic potions and talking to the moon and playing the fiddle behind a farm house for hours and hours. Instead of making friends, Indigo “sat in her window, working with her fiddle, telling everybody, the wind and all his brothers […] the turmoil of the spirit realm” (32). She is also small and beautiful and boys seem to fall in love with her every 10 pages. While the Black bohemian feminist version of the manic pixie dream girl shares some of the hyper quirky, unrealistic qualities of the white caricature, she also is majorly different. She is not interested in men, she says “I don’t think boys are as much fun as everybody says” (63). And unlike the white manic pixie dream girls and she is a main character rather than a side character designed to help the male character discover himself. She is also Black and in love with her Blackness. Still, I think there is some danger is the Black feminist dream girl. The Black fantasy child is magical, (while she loves her world of imagination) she also has extremely mature and deep ways of viewing the world, and doesn’t need friends to be happy. She lives off of the moon’s love and her family’s and elder’s love, but doesn’t need love from white people or other kids her age. She is “Black girl magic” and never not magic, she doesn’t need what the normal, less magical Black girls need. What the white girls need. Her unrealistic un-needing isn’t intended to demonize other Black girls, but I think it has the ability to fuel this culture in which Black girls are supposed to be to magical. This magic means Black girls don’t want approval from others, feel the pain of racism, feel pain at all. We are too magic so we don’t have problems that looking at the moon and playing the fiddle won’t solve, we don’t have problems a potion won’t solve and a bath won’t solve. But we do. I do.

I loved to read about Indigo: a wondrous, though un-real Black child. But I couldn’t help but think that she seemed a little manufactured. She too perfectly the embody the Blaxploitation feminist love child. I’m happy that she exists, though, especially considering her kind did not become a caricature in every other major motion picture. Like Mullen points out,  Sassafras Cypress and Indigo is one of Shange’s lesser known works. Just as Mill’s Fransico is widely unknown. The major difference between the manic pixie dream girl and the Black feminist bohemian dream girl? The Black girl doesn’t sell.

On the Margins

by Makaria Yami 2 Comments

 

The readings this week helped me to learn about the Black Arts Movement and further understand the relationship between Black women and Black men. Prior to this class, I only had a vague understanding of what the Black Arts Movement was. The texts this week not only allowed me to get a better understanding of it, but they helped me learn about some of the criticisms associated with the movement. Going further, I thought about how those criticisms are a continuous theme throughout Shange’s work.

 

In Harryette Mullen’s article, Artistic Expression Was Flowing Everywhere: Alison Mills and Ntozake Shange, Black Bohemian feminists in the 1970s, Mullen talks about how Shange’s book, Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo, is unknown in comparison to her other works. Mullen says that Bohemian Black women “have existed on the margins of mainstream and black cultures” (Mullen 207). She also asserts that “militant revolutionaries of the 1960s tended to conflate their affirmation of blackness with a celebration of black masculinity” (Mullen 213).

 

The criticisms laid out by Mullen portray how Black women, specifically Bohemian Black women, are often overshadowed and their voices are forgotten. This made me think about the relationship between Sassafrass and Mitch in Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo. Shange writes, “Sassafrass caught herself focusing in on Mich again instead of herself, because she did want to be perfected for him, like he was perfected and creating all the time . . . She needed Mitch because Mitch was all she loved in herself” (Shange 80).

 

Just as the Black Arts Movement tended to leave Bohemian Black women on the margins, some Bohemian Black women, like Sassafrass, felt like they had to put themselves in the margins while centering the Black men in their lives. This idea is a common theme among women of color and is also discussed in Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf. The women in Shange’s poem talk about their complicated relationship with men, and how their voice and identity are on the margins, saying that they have “unseen performances” and “lyrics/ no voices.”

All of the work that we have read has shown me how Black women are always at the margins, whether it’s within the relationships Black women have with men or within the Black Arts Movement. What I truly love about Shange’s work is that she does the exact opposite; she crafts beautiful stories with Black women at the center point.

A photo of Black women during the BAM.

Updated: A Fulani Lullaby

by Aissata Ba 1 Comment

 

Yum-maa yehii jaabe

Lullaby

(Fula)

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

Dey yu, dey yu, dey yu

Dey yu, dey yu, dey yu

Yum-maa yehii jaabe,

O addii jaabel gootel,

Muccii e hakkunde laawol

Ferlii e hakkunde maayo

Ferlii e hakkunde maayo

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

Dey yu, dey yu, dey yu

Dey yu, dey yu, dey yu

Yum-maa yehii jaabe

Yum-maa yehii jaabe

O addii jaabel gootel,

O addii jaabel gootel,

Image result for jujube mauritania

Your Mom Went to Look for Jujube Fruit

(English)

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

Oo baynaa! Oo bay!

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

Hush, hush, hush!

Hush, hush, hush!

Your mom went to look for jujube fruit

She found only one,

She ate it on the way back

She threw the pit in the river

She threw the pit in the river

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

Hush, hush, hush!

Hush, hush, hush!

Your mom went to look for jujube fruit

Your mom went to look for jujube fruit

She found only one

She found only one

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

O-oh, bayna! Oh, bay!

I grew up in a Senegalese Fulani/ Pulaar household where pulaar was the dominant language spoken at home. The above lullaby is one of the many lullaby my mother sang to me while I was growing up. It is lullaby I sing to my cousin when she refuses to stop crying. It’s a lullaby that transcends generations. Shange mentioned “mama’s little baby likes shortnin shortnin/ mama’s little baby likes shortnin bread” in her book For Colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow wasn’t enuf which reminded me of that Fulani lullaby.

Both poems are very gendered especially the Fulani one, which doesn’t gender the child but only the absent mother is mentioned. In the Fulani lullaby, the relationship between the child and his or her mother is well established. The crying baby is only missing or crying for his/her mother, who has the unshakable image as the child’s only care taker. The “shortin bread” poem also has the same effect. Rather intentional or not, both poems, in many ways, enforce gender roles and a father’s un-involvement in his child’s raising. Shortnin bread and the fulani lullaby are forms of history that continue to live through the kids of the present. 

Feminism and Fanon

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I really enjoyed reading Fanon’s chapter “Algeria Unveiled” from his book A Dying Colonialism. Having read his article knowing that I was going to transform his words into a poem “Shange style,” gave me a new appreciation for his words. Personally, I find reading pieces by theorists like Marx and Foucault quite difficult because the writing is not as approachable as some other more contemporary authors. I expected Fanon’s work to be much of the same but I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoyed this piece in particular—specifically, the style of it. Fanon discusses the Western notion that women who wear the veil are in need of saving and how this idea has become militarized to justify white intervention in the Middle East. In previous courses I have read Lila Abu-Lughod’s “Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving,” and this piece echoed the sentiment of contemporary Middle Eastern scholars, which was refreshing to read from a male scholar writing in 1965. He describes how the veil is understood in the West as a mechanism of oppression, and by intervening in the Algeria and “saving” these women, they were “symbolically unveiled.” (Fanon 42) However, from the perspective of the colonized this symbolic unveiling can also be understood as rape—of both body and culture. What the colonizer understands as “freedom,” (as motivated by military goals,) the colonized sees this same action as an expression of violence against a physical and mental space. Fanon writes, in regards to the “saving” of Algerian women by the colonizers, “every face that offered itself to the bold and impatient glance of the occupier, was a negative expression of the fact that Algeria was beginning to deny herself and was accepting the rape of the colonizer.” (Fanon 43) Essentially, that the unveiling of women was the acceptance of colonization and one’s position as subordinate to the colonizer. Fanon then explores the effect of this, which was the choice to employ women in the fight against the colonizer. Fanon writes that “this decision to involve women in active elements of the Algerian Revolution was not reached lightly” and that at the start, female involvement in the war was restricted to “married women whose husbands were militants,” then gradually expanded to include “widows or divorced women.” (Fanon 51) Eventually, the volunteering of unmarried girls grew so high that “the political leaders…. Removed all restrictions to accept indiscriminately the support of all Algerian women.” (Fanon 51) While unveiling of women was a violent action in the name of Western perceptions of freedom, this permission to fight against the colonizer was the type of freedom that Algerian woman wanted. Fanon illuminates the key difference between Western perceptions of freedom and what women in Algeria truly want.

 

Women then became an instrumental part of the war and proved to be key militants in the fight against colonization. Fanon spends the later portion of his piece describing how it is that these Western stereotype of “innocence” among women who wear the veil was then militarized by Algerian women in their fight for independence. By mobilizing notions of femininity and its stereotypical ties to weakness and the veil, Algerian women became key players in the resistance, unassuming soldiers that were able to infiltrate European’s by using their own misinformed notions against them.

 

The idea of “saving women” at the surface level can be understood as feminist as freeing an entire country of women from the oppressive man, but in actuality, the story is quite different, and this is what Fanon attempts to make clear. The veil is a garment worn by women throughout history. It is just as anti-feminist to force a woman to wear a veil as it is to force her not to wear the veil. By forcing women to remove the veil, woman by woman, “piece by piece, the flesh of Algeria laid bare.” (Fanon 32) This physical removal of a garments, against the will of the wearer, is extremely possessive, dangerous, and anti-feminist. Fanon does the work of demonstrating how this is the case, and in my opinion his work can be understood as an attempt at an early, male’s feminist critique of colonialism.

 

Having read Shange’s works and understanding her emphasis on movement in literature, I began to see that in Fanon’s work as well. His piece is written in a very approachable and lyrical way, yet his words reflect the mood of the piece. His words of conquer are violent and the language he picks to illuminate this are visible throughout this piece. He uses words like “flesh,” “eroticism,” “brutality,” and “sadism” throughout his piece to evoke a feeling of forced entry—encroachment on physical space and culture. I tried to use the same type of forceful language throughout my poem to produce the same kind of effect. This exercise demonstrated to me how important a “mood” of a piece is—how choosing very specific words have a certain effect that is a deliberate choice made by the author to make the readers feel a certain way.