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In Harryette Mullen\u2019s article, <\/span>Artistic Expression Was Flowing Everywhere: Alison Mills and Ntozake Shange, Black Bohemian feminists in the 1970s<\/span><\/i>, Mullen talks about how Shange\u2019s book, <\/span>Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo<\/span><\/i>, is unknown in comparison to her other works. Mullen says that Bohemian Black women \u201chave existed on the margins of mainstream and black cultures\u201d (Mullen<\/span> 207). She also asserts that \u201cmilitant revolutionaries of the 1960s tended to conflate their affirmation of blackness with a celebration of black masculinity\u201d (Mullen 213).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The criticisms laid out by Mullen portray how Black women, specifically Bohemian Black women, are often overshadowed and their voices are forgotten. This made me think about the relationship between Sassafrass and Mitch in <\/span>Sassafrass Cypress & Indigo<\/span><\/i>. Shange writes, \u201cSassafrass caught herself focusing in on Mich again instead of herself, because she did want to be perfected for him, like he was perfected and creating all the time . . . She needed Mitch because Mitch was all she loved in herself\u201d (Shange 80). <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just as the Black Arts Movement tended to leave Bohemian Black women on the margins, some Bohemian Black women, like Sassafrass, felt like they had to put themselves in the margins while centering the Black men in their lives. This idea is a common theme among women of color and is also discussed in Shange\u2019s<\/span> For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide\/When The Rainbow Is Enuf<\/span><\/i>. The women in Shange\u2019s poem talk about their complicated relationship with men, and how their voice and identity are on the margins, saying that they have \u201c<\/span>unseen performances\u201d and \u201clyrics\/ no voices.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n All of the work that we have read has show<\/span>n me how Black women are always at the margins, whether it\u2019s within the relationships Black women have with men or within the Black Arts Movement. What I truly love about Shange\u2019s work is that she does the exact opposite; she crafts beautiful stories with Black women at the center point. <\/span><\/p>\n
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