{"id":563,"date":"2015-11-11T04:55:34","date_gmt":"2015-11-11T04:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=563"},"modified":"2016-01-08T07:42:40","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T07:42:40","slug":"inter-generational-communion-on-mothering-and-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/?p=563","title":{"rendered":"Inter-generational Communion: On Mothering and Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/122054093\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" title=\"Camille A. Brown with Tracy Wormworth in BLACK GIRL: Linguistic Play (excerpt)\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>&#8220;I see the street play, the tap dance; I see the double Dutch stuff. It tells a story about how girls pass on skills to girls. You don&#8217;t learn double Dutch from your teachers or your parents, but you learn it from your girlfriends. And it&#8217;s about that kind of sharing and that trust and that passing along of information and wisdom and ability and excellence.&#8221; \u2013 Eva Yaa Asantewaa<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_564\" style=\"width: 209px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/sassafrass-cypress-indigo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-564\" class=\"wp-image-564 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/sassafrass-cypress-indigo-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"sassafrass cypress indigo\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/sassafrass-cypress-indigo-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/sassafrass-cypress-indigo.jpg 409w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-564\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sassafrass, Cypress &amp; Indigo by Ntozake Shange (1982)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In talking about <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/122054093\" target=\"_blank\">Camille A. Brown\u2019s<\/a> <u>Black Girl: Linguistic Play<\/u>\u2014a show seeking to counter simplistic and overused portrayals of black female experiences in terms of strength and resilience by presenting black female experiences through nuanced understandings of play and protest, friendship and girlhood\u2014<a href=\"http:\/\/infinitebody.blogspot.com\/p\/eva-yaa-asantewaa-is-native-new-yorker.html\" target=\"_blank\">Eva Yaa Asantewaa<\/a> highlights the centrality of sharing to girlhood. I\u2019ve included Brown\u2019s work because it\u2019s bewitchingly honest and glorious, and because I think it helps a great deal to connect mothering, the nature of black girl friendships, and ancestral inheritance\u2014all themes that appear throughout Ntozake Shange\u2019s <em>Sassafrass, Cypress &amp; Indigo<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Broadly, mothering is about nurturing, guiding, healing and cultivating gifts. While Aunt Haydee\u2019s mothering manifests as teaching Indigo about \u201cgiving birth, curing women folks &amp; their loved ones\u201d and also making space for Indigo to play her fiddle, Indigo is seen mothering Aunt Haydee and others through storytelling (\u201cIndigo told Aunt Haydee her <span style=\"text-decoration: underline\">own<\/span> stories\u201d 221), and soothing mothers and children with her fiddle. Not only are these acts reflections of motherhood, they also speak to the nature of friendship. <em>You learn double dutch from your girlfriends.<\/em> There\u2019s a constant exchange between these women, these girls that ultimately conflates motherhood and friendship in a way that defines inter-generational communion.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201c<strong>Aunt Haydee pleaded with <em>Blue Sunday<\/em> to \u2018Please, give this child life, please, give this child the freedom you know.\u2019 Then Indigo would play her fiddle, however the woman wanted\u201d (223).<br \/>\n<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The above quote was extremely restorative and interesting in that although neither of these women\/\/these girls are bearers of children; their participation alone in the process of bringing life into the world renders them mothers. Further, having the power to participate in the birth of people of color, and having the access to the history and thus the ability to call on ancestors for help is a gift. This moment where members of different generations (<em>Blue <\/em>Sunday, Aunt Haydee, Indigo, and the new child) come together becomes a recipe for ancestral inheritance. One that can look like playing double dutch, gaining the ability to move the sea, healing folks and their loved ones, and hands holding onto voices of slaves singing out of walls.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>\u201cThe slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, &amp; accepted indifference as kindness. Now they sang out from the walls, pulling Indigo toward them. Indigo ran her hands along the walls, to get the song, getta hold to the voices\u201d (49).<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_565\" style=\"width: 592px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/CamilleABrown_blackgirl-linguisticplay_ChristopherDuggan_280.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-565\" class=\"wp-image-565\" src=\"http:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/CamilleABrown_blackgirl-linguisticplay_ChristopherDuggan_280-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan)\" width=\"582\" height=\"388\" srcset=\"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/CamilleABrown_blackgirl-linguisticplay_ChristopherDuggan_280-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/CamilleABrown_blackgirl-linguisticplay_ChristopherDuggan_280.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-565\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Black Girl: Linguistic Play (Photo by Christoper Duggan). Found on camilleabrown.org<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;I see the street play, the tap dance; I see the double Dutch stuff. It tells a story about how girls pass on skills to girls. You don&#8217;t learn double Dutch from your teachers or your parents, but you learn it from your girlfriends. And it&#8217;s about that kind of sharing and that trust and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[209,208,207,206,210,205,204],"class_list":["post-563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ancestral-inheritance","tag-black-girl-friendship","tag-black-girlhood","tag-camille-a-brown","tag-eva-yaa-asantewaa","tag-mothering","tag-sassafras-cypress-and-indigo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563","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\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":770,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions\/770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}