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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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Certain Forms of Nurture – Makeen Week 3

by Zachery 1 Comment

Men have been able

to give

us

power, support

 

and certain forms of nurture

(as individuals)

 

When

they

choose

…

 

but the power

is always

stolen

power.

 

withheld from

the mass of women

in

patriarchy.

 

– Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born (page 246)

 

This quote is one that stood out to me most in Adrienne Rich’s Of Women Borne. It was a favorite of mine because it seemed to capture so much in very few words. More specifically, this passage forced me to reconceptualize power and how I understand its creation and its use. Previously, I always understood power as something that allows people to create and enforce certain constructs. Adrienne Rich asserts power as a construct itself–– a fact I had never thought of. She even goes further to say that power is a patriarchal construct that is in many ways sustained by the ways in which it is distributed. Power does not belong to the patriarchy to give, and the patriarchy thrives off of taking power and redistributing it when it deems necessary.

 

Re-writing the passage as a poem forced me to even further reconceptualize a number of things. Firstly, words that initially struck me as some sort of philosophical theory felt more like natural thought processes in the form of the poem. Before I had written the poem, I wondered if the words would lose their weight, but they did not. If anything, I felt I was able to better understand Rich’s words in this form. They flowed, the words came individually rather than in the form of a wordy phrase as they once existed. In deciding exactly how to restructure the poem, I formatted as I read aloud. Thus, the structure of the poem felt comfortable to speak. Words like us and them that contrasted one another, to me, felt as though they should stand alone. I then had to make smaller decisions like using ellipses in place of a semi colon or even placing the words “as individuals” into parentheses, mostly to find a more natural way to account for the frequent use of commas in the original writing. It became interesting to me that poetry allows for frequent time to reflect within its structure, something that a traditional paragraph form does not allow for. This exerciser finally allowed me to understand Ntozake Shange’s emphasis on the importance of writing existing beyond the page. Whether as movement, speech or song, extending language beyond its written form only strengthens its ability to be understood.

 

A Mother’s Dream – Charista Blogpost #1

by Charista 1 Comment

As I was reading through Adrienne Rich’s Of Woman Born: Reflections on Motherhood as Experience and Institution, these lines struck me.  I rearranged the lines so the reader can take pauses after each line and so the words look more alive, almost like they’re floating in the air. It reminded me of my own personal experiences with my mother and how she raised me. I am the eldest of three daughters born to an immigrant mother, who arrived here from the opposite side of the world with my grandparents and her two sisters to seek the American dream.

Working double and triple jobs in menial labor despite college degrees in their native land, my grandparents instilled the virtues of education to their children –all three ultimately earning doctorate degrees, including my mother. The adults in my life inspire me. I model my courage, ambition, and kindness after them. My mother is the bravest, strongest, and most hardworking woman I know. She raised my sisters and I with values that prioritize family and education to ensure our lives would be different than her childhood growing up.

She always puts her children first, even still to this day. My mother constantly tells us to live freely and follow our dreams so we can live the lives we want, the lives she always dreamt we’d have. My mother means everything to me. I’d be lost without her and all of her guidance and love. I often reflect on my life and how grateful I am to have such a strong, independent woman as my mother who inspires me to pursue my passions with the mindset that anything is possible.

 

Change Makers

by Dayna Beatty 1 Comment

I enjoyed reading Harryette Mullen’s article after having read Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo because it helped me contextualize the text and understand its importance and the nuances to the story. The article emphasizes how intersectional and approachable the text is, and I found myself agreeing with Mullen’s comments.

Mullen writes that Shange is best known for being a poet, but that this novel includes “narrative, poetry, drama, letters, recipes, folklore, and magic spells.” (Mullen 206) Each of these different mediums, with the exception of narrative, on their own may not seem as approachable or cohesive, but how Shange puts them together in her novel makes it easy for readers to see each of these different platforms as a part of a whole.

The book is intersectional in several ways. Firstly, the topic of the story is intersectional in that it describes an intersectional experience, the “emergence of black feminist consciousness within communities of bohemian artists in the 1970s.” (Mullen 205) The novel is also intersectional in its approach to storytelling—through the use of over five different mediums Shange not only puts together a beautiful piece of literature, but celebrates the many ways in which writers choose to share their stories. The subjects of this story are also intersectional, from sharing Indigo’s journey at home to her sisters Cypress and Sassafrass’s stories as they journey away to find themselves and explore their respective passions of dance and art, the novel itself incorporates three different lives into one.

The piece of digital media that I included for this week’s post seemed appropriate to me for two reasons. The poet who wrote this piece was the first person that introduced me to spoken word poetry. Prior to hearing her work, I had never before experienced spoken word and my knowledge of poetry was very limited. She opened my eyes to a world of expression that I had previously never thought much of. Secondly, this piece combines spoken word with both music and cinematography.  In keeping with the theme of intersectional mediums, I wanted to include this piece as an example of a combination of platforms through which artists can communicate a message.

Azure Antoinette says, “we cling to the past, we cling to the normal we cling to the useful, accessible information, we define ourselves by those that have come before us, what they did or did not accomplish… you are your history.” In the first portion of the poem, she emphasizes embracing your past, but not defining ourselves solely based on the past. She continues her poem by saying, “You are a change maker… so when people ask you who you are, tell them you are a vessel, that your job is desperately trying to make the next Sistine Chapel with your hands tied behind your back and your eyes closed. Tell them you are working on creating a positive social system… when someone asks you how you are, them ‘em, I’m brilliant. When they as you where are you, tell them, I’m architecting change.” The purpose of this poem is for listeners to understand that your past is a part of you, but you are also an agent of change. Shange, throughout her written work and her life story, demonstrates how everybody can be a change maker, regardless of who you are.

Love and Emotion in Revolution

by Dayna Beatty 0 Comments

“Feelings of love are fundamental in revolutionary practice.” (Havlin 81)

 

Paired with each other, these readings seem to reach the same conclusion: for revolution to be inclusive and effective, love must be present. Love therefor leads to intersectionality—appreciation and recognition for everyone within a movement produces the most inclusive and thus, successful, activism possible. Both pieces call readers to acknowledge the hierarchical nature of humanity—both transnationally and within communities. Havlin writes, “Vasquez identifies self-awareness about power inequalities among colonized people as necessary components of building collaborations across social and national borders.” (Havlin 91) Essentially, she concludes that power dynamics are present not just between the colonizer and the colonized, but among the colonized as well. There is no society void of some form of hierarchy that is driven by different forms of oppression. Similarly, Thompson writes, “a recognition that race cannot be seen in binary terms; a recognition that racism exists in your backyard as well as in the countries the US is bombing or inhabiting economically.” (Thompson 349) Ideas about race produce stereotypes that are present not just among the dominant, western, white group but also among minority groups. Hierarchies do not simply exist between the dominant group and the “other”—to believe that this is the case when performing activism is a reductionist approach that makes it difficult to recognize other forms of oppression—be they race based or based upon something else.

 

Havlin’s piece calls readers to recognize the importance of love and emotion in activism. To recognize emotion in activism was an interesting analytical approach that, up until now, I had never considered. The texts I have read thus far have not stressed how important emotion it is, and I theorize that is due to the fact that feminists are hesitant to acknowledge their emotions out of fear of ratifying the stereotype that women are “emotion.” However, as stated earlier in the piece, love (an emotion) is necessary for revolution.  This idea also encompasses the need to recognize other forms of oppression alongside the feminist fight. As Thompson’s history of Second Wave Feminism exposes, effective and inclusive feminism is not simply limited to a woman versus man binary. It is recognizing that there many different forms of oppression and privilege that work together to form a person’s positionality. Thompson writes that it is necessary for a white woman to recognize her  “position as both oppressed and oppressor— as both women and white.” (Thompson 342) Ultimately, including love and emotion and recognizing hierarchies among even homogenous groups produces a “cross-racial sisterhood” that is “powerful.” (Thompson 347) Intersectionality includes gender and race, but also class, education, ability status, and hundreds more identifiers. In order to create a movement that offers the highest potential for success, activists must love and acknowledge all of these identifiers.

 

I chose to include the following video a TED talk given by one of the first women to coin the term “intersectional.” Whenever I explain intersectional feminism to people who’ve only been exposed to white feminism (as mentioned directly in Thompson’s piece), I refer them to this video. I felt the exercise she does at the very beginning of this piece in particular to be incredibly demonstrative of the dangers that activism which lacks an intersectional approach produces.