A certain aura of fantasy is present when we read the different spells featured in the novel as well as digest Indigo’s relationship to her dolls and to the greater neighborhood. This fantasy has a mystic quality, a magic that shows through the lives of Hilda’s daughter. Each child crafts their femininity and therefore life in a way that is alternative from their mother’s. This is a story about family, but more so a collection, a community of women.
Shange integrates the possessions of these women: many letters, instructions for Cypress’ home, recipes, spells, journal entries into the novel perhaps because, as Indigo says, “black people needed so many things.” Our job as a reader is not only absorb the lives of the main characters but also to be engaged in the methods of healing that they follow, which is very much ingrained in these pieces of things. The complete consciousness phrase that Indigo came into was that “black people needed so many things” AND so she would “[make] up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.”
It is this nature of creation, for self, and also for the communal that distinguishes the development of women. One contemporary example of this is the Neo-soul duo band group Oshun which was created in NYC. Their name and their music work to empower women.
Cypress, Sassafrass and Indigo becomes a text where Shange elucidates the experience of African-American women whose lives (though they might be “stuck”) build on and reflect African values: the tradition of the home and cooking, the legacy that a mother passes through to her children, and being “third-world” descendants in various American states. The lives of these four women happens at the same time a slave narrative unfolds. There is also a tie to Nigerian culture that culminates when Sassafrass performs a dance to shake the spirit of Mitch away (because, according to Indigo it “was the spirit of things that mattered (5).” During her dance, Oshun, a supreme divinity, comes to inhabit her body and her step. Moreover, the importance of deities is represented when Shange includes number eight of Cypresses’ house rules: “8. Don’t touch the alter for the Orishas:” minor Nigerian gods. Perfect enough, the name the duo choose as their title honors the work of Yoruba deities in showcasing the virtue of femininity and holiness of womanhood.
In one of their songs, Gyenyame, which means “expect for God/ the supremacy of God,” the duo sings:
“Orishas, we your teachers, open up your eyes and recognize
It’s a, a reason for the demons
Refuse to comply, speak your mind, don’t abide
We the
Orishas, we your teachers, sister deities, the rivers and the seas
Orishas, your teachers, Queens of Africa, Oshun and Yemoja”
The band Oshun more than just calls upon Orishas and embodies them like Sassafrass, they put forward contemporary ideas of African-American empowerment, much of which stems from consciousness. The following video aims to quantify what it means for blacks to be “free somebody[s] (7)” in this moment in time.