{"id":1898,"date":"2018-10-13T14:59:57","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T18:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=1898"},"modified":"2018-10-13T14:59:57","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T18:59:57","slug":"lady-in-orange-on-healing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=1898","title":{"rendered":"Lady in Orange on Healing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the parts of <em>for colored girls who have considered suicide\/ when the rainbow is enuf <\/em>that struck me most was the Lady in Orange\u2019s poem describing her relationship with a man who continually cheats on her with his ex-lover. She vividly describes her pain, stating \u201cyou put my heart in the bottom of\/ yr shoe\u201d, describing the way this man has abused and disrespected her and their relationship. Shange complicates the narrative of the \u201cwoman scorned\u201d in showing that Lady in Orange vacillates between caring for herself and describing her pain. On one hand, she is able to find her own joy in dancing, for example. She states that she does not \u201cleave bitterness in somebody else\u2019s cup\u201d, including the \u201cother woman\u201d and eventually states that she has left \u201csorrow on the curb\u201d for herself. Yet, at the same time, she seems to redirect the injury the \u201cwoman scorned\u201d supposedly takes out on others onto herself, stating \u201cI have died in a real way\u201d, and is not satisfied by her new lover. Shange beautifully shows that healing is not a unidirectional process in any way. Healing requires an examination and acceptance of pain in addition to the strength to look past it, and the joy and sorrow of moving on are wrapped up in each other.<\/p>\n<p>I truly have not seen a work that captures the many dimensions of healing as well as Shange, but I was reminded of Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cPray You Catch Me\u201d. In this song, Beyonc\u00e9 focuses more on her attachment to her lover than in Shange\u2019s work. However, the song does capture how her pain is rooted in a deep love, which continues her hope that he can and will return her prayers. This mirrors Shange&#8217;s description of the willingness to hold on to love and joy through suffering.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1140\" height=\"641\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VLX5I9JiXTI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the parts of for colored girls who have considered suicide\/ when the rainbow is enuf that struck me most was the Lady in Orange\u2019s poem describing her relationship with a man who continually cheats on her with his ex-lover. She vividly describes her pain, stating \u201cyou put my heart in the bottom of\/ [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}