\u201cThem whites what owned slaves took everythin\u2019 was ourselves & didn\u2019t even keep it fo\u2019 they own selves. Just threw it on away, ya heah. Took the drums what they could, but they couldn\u2019t take our feet. Took them languages what we speak\u2026But the fiddle was the talkin\u2019 one. The fiddle be callin\u2019 our gods what left us\/be givin\u2019 back some devilment & hope in our bodies worn down & lonely over these fields & kitchens. Why white folks so dumb, they was thinkin\u2019 that if we didn\u2019t have nothin\u2019 of our own, they could come controllin\u2019, meddlin\u2019, whippin\u2019 our sense on outta us. But the Colored smart, ya see. The Colored got some wits to em, you & me, we ain\u2019t the onliest ones be talkin\u2019 wit the unreal. What ya think music is, whatchu think the blues be, & them get happy church musics is about, but talkin\u2019 with the unreal what\u2019s mo\u2019 real than most folks ever gonna know.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo<\/i>, pg. 22-23).<\/p>\n
I find that often in literature the people who are outcasts and considered outside of society\u2019s bounds are the most insightful. It is interesting that Indigo has the most thoughtful and honest conversation with an adult who is somewhat outside of the community because he is eccentric and lives outdoors. Uncle John is able to speak freely to Indigo despite her age because he separated from normal society. He is honest with Indigo about what it means that black people must take advantage of other modes of communication and expression. Indigo\u2019s mother adores her and does her best to protect her but she wants to shelter her child instead of providing her with the necessary truths to prepare her for black womanhood. Not treating Indigo like a young adult is her mother\u2019s way of protecting her and being a good parent. Unlike her mother, Uncle John does not feel the need to shelter Indigo. Uncle John is characterized as being \u201coff\u201d and does not subscribe to the unwritten rules of keeping children naive, so he sees no fault in educating Indigo on the history of her people.<\/p>\n
The presence of white people in this passage, and in this book as a whole, is extremely different from the Shange works that we have read so far. In for colored girls<\/i>, white people are not present nor seem to be of much importance. Of course, the systems that oppress the black women in the choreopoem are sometimes the result of a white presence, but in her manual for young black women how to deal with a white presence is not the goal. Instead she focuses on the relationships of black women with black men, other black women and self exploration. In Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo <\/i>there is discussion about how black people must live their lives in response to the presence of white people around them. In this passage Uncle John schools Indigo on the mistakes slave masters maid when trying to subdue the spirits and cultures of black slaves. He does not conceal his contempt and disapproval of white people and their actions towards black people, in a way that we have yet not seen Shange of her characters refer to white people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cThem whites what owned slaves took everythin\u2019 was ourselves & didn\u2019t even keep it fo\u2019 they own selves. Just threw it on away, ya heah. Took the drums what they could, but they couldn\u2019t take our feet. Took them languages what we speak\u2026But the fiddle was the talkin\u2019 one. The fiddle be callin\u2019 our gods […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,57],"tags":[218,219,61],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogposts","category-student-blogpost","tag-communication","tag-modes-of-expression","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","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\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bcrw.barnard.edu\/digitalshange\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}