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The Worlds of Ntozake ShangeAND DIGITAL STORYTELLING

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the meaning of legacy

by Elizabeth 0 Comments

“Ultimately, as all people of progressive politic do, we wrote this book for you- the next generation, and the next one. Your lives are so vast before you- you whom the popular culture has impassively termed “Millennials.” But I think the women of Bridge would’ve simply called you, “familia” – our progeny, entrusting you with the legacy of our thoughts and activism, in order to grow them into a flourishing planet and a just world.”

– Cherríe Moraga

my grandmothers in august 2017. this was taken after my senior speech.

The past few months, I have been thinking a lot about my own history and how this has informed who, what, and where I am today. Some of this has taken a very literal sense, such as trying to uncover the names of my enslaved ancestors. In a more abstract sense, I’ve also been trying to understand more of the histories of people who may not be related to me by blood, but are connected to me through culture, tradition, and spirit.

 

 

While reading the new introduction to This Bridge Called My Back, I almost laughed at Moraga’s excerpt she included from a letter she wrote to Barbara Smith. In it, she talks about how uncomfortable her own experience was listening to Shange present her work, and how it caused Moraga to realize that in her “development as a poet, [she has], in many ways, denied the voice of [her] brown mother” (26). Neither this, nor the conversation about her physical discomfort was necessarily funny to me, but it seemed ridiculously ironic that this is not only what I was feeling at the beginningof the semester when reading Shange, but it is also how I felt going to Moraga’s talk at Barnard a few months ago.

This to me only emphasizes the solidarity and commonality that Moraga, Shange, and the other folks that contributed to Bridge write about. Our struggles, love, and consciousness can come from different places and times, but are ultimately united. Those Shange learned from brought her to influence Moraga, who both influence me. I will never actually know them, just like I will never know those in my personal history that have influenced me too. Now, I believe that literally knowing them is not what constitutes our relationship, but it is hearing their stories, remembering their legacies, and carrying their work forward to grow the “flourishing planet and just world.”

Archive Find #2 : TWWA Gatherings

by Michelle 0 Comments

This second #Archivefind also comes from the Third World Women’s Alliance (TWWA) papers found at the Sophia Smith College Archives.

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I have selected a few fliers that speak to one kind of work that these Third World Women and People’s collectives did in the 70’s, which is materializing these collective spaces and making visible their organizing. One of the fliers calls for a picnic and the other two are about organizing for International Women’s Day.

The TWWA states throughout its mission statement and organizational goals that of primary importance is ensuring that all meetings and events account for the children of the women and organizers that come out to these events; which meant setting up a Committee on Childcare and ensuring all events are child friendly or has a sister to watch the kids.

These organizers were also adamant about making these spaces and the knowledges and ideas that came out of these spaces to be accessible.

I am reading these priorities into these fliers to be able to imagine the spaces they created and shared. While we can never fully piece together their full story through the archives and materials they left behind, we can learn and take away elements that resonant with us. In envisioning the spaces I hope to create in the gatherings for my project, I will be drawing from these priorities and literally taking from these fliers to create a collaborative zine.

 

Reading Zake: “A Scarlet Woman”

by Michelle 10 Comments

For the past few months, I have been going through the works of Third World Women and Peoples collectives from the 70s and this journey began with learning that Ntozake Shange contributed to the first anthology by Third World Women. Titled “Third World Women,” it was published by the collective, Third World Communications in 1972. The editors preface, “We recognize the necessity for Third World people to have accessible to them material written by and for them – we must be able to see, hear, feel, smell, taste portraits of ourselves”. With this mission in mind, Shange submits this poem, “A Scarlet Woman” to the anthology, and at first read, I loved it in the same ways that I loved her poem “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” (A Daughter’s Geography).

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

Third World Women’s Alliance/Making Use of Digital Archives

by Kim Hall 0 Comments

First edition of Triple Jeopardy, the newspaper of the Third World Women’s Alliance

I wanted to just make a pitch to everyone to remember that  you can find primary sources in rooms beyond those designated as “archives”   cultural institutions like the Schomburg: sometimes they are in main collections or (since digitization is happening at an increasing rapid clip) online. You should be inventive and wide-ranging when looking for accessible copies of works you might want to use.  For example, following up on Michelle’s Archive Task #1, I was trying to see if there was anyplace in NYC that has papers related to the Third World Women’s Alliance.  The main branch of the NYPL (not the “archive” per se) has Triple Jeopardy, the newspaper of the TWWA, in its main collection.  However, that journal is also available online in the Independent Voices database.

Independent Voices is an open-access collection of digitized independent publications. It can be a very rich source for Black Power/”post” Black Power and Feminist materials. For example, I found several pieces by Ntozake (also spelled Ntosake) in the database.  Since some of you are interested in healing, I have a screenshot of  her talking about her work with “injured” women in an extensive interview published in the literary journal,  River Styx.

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Ntozake’s response to interview questions from Students at Harris-Stowe College in Saint Louis (1978). Note the use of the dash in the interview transcription.

I highly recommend this interview, Shange talks about many of the things you are investigating now: Black Power, Spirituality, Third Worldism,  Feminism, childhood, etc.  Independent Voices also suggests that you help with digitization by correcting some of the OCR (Optical-Scanning Recognition) errors.

Shange, Ntozake. “Ntozake Shange: Live from Saint Louis!” River Styx, no. 5 (1979): 91–115.
UPDATE:  I absolutely forgot to share with you Archive Grid, an archive search engine that lets you map searches. for example, when I did a search for Triple Jeopardy, once I moved from the daunting “list view,” the summary view let me know that in Philadelphia (hey Michelle!) there was a copy of one issue located in the “Women’s Health Concerns Committee Records” at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Closer to home, I discovered that the Columbia literary magazine, Emanon, published some of Ntozake Shange’s poetry from when she was a Barnard Student (search Paulette Williams).