NTOZAKE SHANGE IS THE NAME Pt.1

Play Writes vs. America DEEP DIVE

Ntozake Shange was a brilliant American poet and playwright who structured a forward-thinking framework for what it means to be a feminist in the 70s. Shange conveys women who relate to each other through colloquial speech, in which they communally understand the plight of being a Black woman in America. She underscores this through her play Spell #7, where she writes not only about women but about Black actors in America and how the media has shaped the Black experience. She extrapolates these themes by recognizing intersectionality and its effects regarding the political, economic, and social differences in America.

Black Nationalism and Women’s Rights Movement

At a fervent time when America was booming with political movements presenting Black nationalism and the women’s rights movement, Ntozake Shange published her play For Colored Girls in 1975. Being a Black woman seemed to be something that was a bit ironic in a way. Although there was an outburst of minorities fighting for their equality and human rights, Black women still seemed to be the marginalized group. Black nationalists were led by Black men who believed that women were subordinated and often treated them as such. During the movement, women were often moved to supporting roles rather than leadership roles, and there was also a sense of toxic patriarchy that was established in Black households due to the influence of societal standards of what Black masculinity is in America. On the other hand, although women were also using their voices and raising their fists, the women’s rights movement catered to the experiences of white women, thus meaning Black women were excluded from this movement. It was a double-edged sword—being told that both freedoms were not fully obtainable, and being Black and a woman was a whole different experience on its own. Through Shange’s play Spell #7, she expresses “that the liberation of white women in the 1970s was accomplished at the expense of African-American women. Shange parodies the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970s as a monolithic predominantly white organization composed of isolated housewives whose estrangement from economic and political realities allowed them to privilege sexual difference above racial and class differences” (Cronacher, 48). The fight for equality was complicated, to say the least, especially when having to prove your humanity and worth within your own community, both gender and race. Shange expresses this confusion and fight in her play For Colored Girls when she writes,
“Ever since I realized there was someone called a colored girl, an evil woman, a bitch, or a nag
I’ve been trying not to be that & leave bitterness in somebody else’s cup…
I had convinced myself colored girls had no right to sorrow… I couldn’t stand being sorry & colored at the same time
It’s so redundant in the modern world” (Shange, 56-57).

Shange expresses the stereotypes and tropes given to Black women, the expectations, and the dilemma in which having an identity doesn’t seem obtainable in a world that denies your humanity.
“Being alive & being a woman & being colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ I haven’t conquered yet” (Shange, 59).

She writes this phrase as if it is a never-ending battle and a constant discovery, learning how to move in a world while being a woman and Black. It hits you spiritually because how are you to be what you know you are when you are constantly called worthless and not given a space to be?

Importance of Shange’s Rhetoric

Shange’s feminism was rooted not in what a woman was told she was by American standards, but in what a woman is and can be, and how the recognition of such is unifying and needs to be acknowledged. She not only spoke for Black women when writing For Colored Girls, but for all women of color. She used international references that included Hispanic culture, allowing different women to see themselves in the stories, including white women. She used a certain rhetoric that was authentic to the experience of a woman, a Black woman in particular. In an interview with Henry Blackwell, Shange explains,
“The same rhetoric that is used to establish the Black Aesthetic, we must use to establish a women’s aesthetic, which is to say that those parts of reality that are ours, those things about our bodies, the cycles of our lives that have been ignored for centuries in all castes and classes of our people, are to be dealt with now” (Blackwell, 136).

She is explaining how stories for women and by women must include the reality and experience of women, rather than the Western and male standard of what a woman is, just as Black stories should be told and explained in truth. Society is polluted to serve the audience of a white male gaze, and it would be unfair and inauthentic that one would have to write in order to succumb to that traditional audience. Shange emphasizes this when she responds,
“Black, Asian, or Latin, they’re only very nationalistic until they realize that all Third World people are working towards the same thing, which for us is the explication of our reality” (Blackwell, 134).

By using rhetoric that served to be authentic to the experience of a Black woman, she gave her character humanity and ownership rather than victimization.

PART 2 TO COME…..

Work Cited

Shange, Ntozake. Spell #7: A Theater Piece in Two Acts. Samuel French , Limited, 1981.

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf: A Choreopoem. Book club ed. New York, MacMillan, 1977.
Waller-Peterson, Belinda. “‘Nobody Came/Cuz Nobody Knew’: Shame and Isolation in Ntozake Shange’s ‘Abortion Cycle #1.’” CLA Journal, vol. 62, no. 1, 2019, pp. 22–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.34042/claj.62.1.0022. Accessed 10 Mar. 2024.

Cronacher, Karen. “Unmasking the Minstrel Mask’s Black Magic in Ntozake Shange’s ‘Spell #7.’” Theatre Journal, vol. 44, no. 2, 1992, pp. 177–93. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3208738. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
Toland-Dix, Shirley. “Black Women’s Lives Matter: Coming to Consciousness through Ntozake Shange’s Embodied Feminism.” CLA Journal, vol. 62, no. 2, 2019, pp. 168–77. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.34042/claj.62.2.0168. Accessed 10 Mar. 2024.
(how this applies presently)
Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 43, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1241–99. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039. Accessed 15 Mar. 2024.
Blackwell, Henry. “An Interview with Ntozake Shange.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, 1979, pp. 134–38. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3041478. Accessed 13 Mar. 2024. Shulman , Alix Kates, and Honor Moore. “A Brief History of Women’s Liberation Movements in America.” Literary Hub, 19 Feb. 2021, lithub.com/a-brief-history-of-womens-liberation-movements-in-america/.