In”Artistic Expression was Flowing Everywhere” Alison Mills and Ntozake Shamje, Black Bohemian Feminists in the 1970s . HARRYETTE MULLEN states “Claiming their place as a significant force in U.S. literature in the 1970s, African-American women writers faced difficult choices involving contradictory values within the ashifting terrain of political, cultural, and aesthetic movements”. This quote for me is great but I would argue that there has never been a time for black women in America to not face the damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario as artists.<\/p>\n
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Two weeks ago we lightly talked about the violence and anger placed on Shange when she did not portray black men in the way that certain people within the black community would have preferred a different portrayal\u00a0on the real physical, emotional and mental abuse of black women, non\u00a0binary and trans folxs in our communities. Yet I feel like this is a consistent theme black women face. From Suzan Lori Parks, to Jamaica Kincaid many black female writers in the modern age have been held under the microscope. Roxanne Gay, for example, is a complicated case. She is a bisexual Haitian American woman who grew up with financial privilege\u00a0as well as being light-skinned\u00a0but wrote texts about women being brutalized in Haiti. She received\u00a0severe homophobia, fatphobic, biphobia, sexist and all around trash responses from people. How do we help these women and future writers who may fear brutality\u00a0in a response to humanity?<\/p>\n
I have never thought critically about Ntozake as a bohemian artist and perhaps this is because we’re raised to see black women as simply black female artists. And sure being a black woman comes with so much but there is freedom in being able to write and not think about certain things or not think about other people. Jamaica Kincaid has a really that if you’re going to be a black woman who writes don’t be a black female writer, and to me, this means to color the lines that you want to not necessarily the lines defined for black women.<\/p>\n
Here is a bit from “An equation for black people onstage” by Suzan Lori Parks (pulitzer prize winning playwright)<\/p>\n