mozambique
\nangola
\nsalvador & johannesburg
\nthe atlantic side of nicaragua costa rica
\ncuba puerto rico
\ncharleston & savannah\/ haiti
\npanama canal\/ the yucatan
\nmanila
\nla habana
\nguyana
\nsantiago & brixton
\nnear managua\/
\np\u00e9tionville
\nabidjan
\nchicago
\ntrinidad
\nsan juan
\ncapetown & palestine
\nluanda
\nchicago<\/p>\n
These are all the places Shange connects alludes to in “Bocas” in\u00a0A Daughter’s Geography.\u00a0<\/em>She names them as her numerous children related though they “cannot speak\/the same language.” (Shange). She connects all the children of Africa and the African diaspora through experience not just through heritage. There is the simple explanation for these relationships; the one often invoked by artists and academics alike: that each ethnicity is just a stop on the trade route. Mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons became Basian, Jamaican, American, and Cuban through trade and bartering. They developed new cultures and claimed happenstance for their own.<\/p>\n “but a long time ago\/ we boarded ships\/ locked in Shange goes farther than this connection. She unites these ethnicities and nationalities through their experiences of oppression and subjugation at the hands of similar if not the same groups of oppressors.<\/p>\n “but we fight the same old men\/ in the new world…\u00a0the same men who thought the earth waz flat She credits the experience of being marginalized and overcoming that marginalization as a uniting force of these colored people. The rhythms that emerged, the patios that formed, the food, the names, all point to a common experience. It is no surprise then that she had to make language move. When it moves, no matter what language it is, poems can capture, unite, and uplift her children. It doesn’t matter that one speaks Spanish, the other Portuguese; they use the movement in the poem, the space between the words, the history behind their creation to unite themselves as family.<\/p>\n I added some of my favorite spoken word poets from all over the diaspora.<\/p>\n
\ndepths of seas our spirits\/ kisst the earth
\non the atlantic side of nicaragua costa rica
\nour lips traced the edges of cuba puerto rico
\ncharleston & savannah\/ in haiti
\nwe embraced &
\nmade children of the new world” (Shange)<\/p>\n
\ngo on over the edge\/ go on over the edge old men”<\/p>\n