MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO Human Rights Expressed by Voices of the Characters in Ntozake Shange´S Plays

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MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature

Human Rights Expressed by Voices of the Characters in Ntozake Shange´s Plays

Bachelor Thesis

Brno 2018

Supervisor: Author: Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D. Jana Veselá, DiS.

Bibliografický záznam

Veselá, Jana. Základní lidská práva vyjádřena hlasy postav v divadelních hrách Ntozake Shange: bakalářská práce. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, Fakulta pedagogická, Katedra anglického jazyka a literatury, 2018. 62 s. Vedoucí bakalářské práce Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.

Bibliography

Veselá, Jana. Human Rights Expressed by Voices of the Characters in Ntozake Shange´s Plays: bachelor thesis. Brno: Masaryk University, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, 2018. 62 pages. The supervisor of the bachelor thesis Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D.

Anotace

Bakalářská práce Základní lidská práva vyjádřena hlasy postav v divadelních hrách Ntozake Shange pojednává o divadelních hrách Ntozake Shange. Práce obsahuje informace o autorce, představuje typické znaky jejích her. Cílem práce je analýza myšlenkových postojů postav v hrách For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Spell #7, A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes a ve hře From Okra to Greens. Součástí rozboru jsou i monology či básně, které slouží také k předvádění na jevišti. Jedná se o The Love Space Demands a I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes. Práce porovnává ženské i mužské kvality postav či jejich charakterové nedostatky zasazené do černošského prostředí s ohledem na kulturní rozdíly mezi černou a bílou komunitou. Závěr práce tvoří zhodnocení oblastí lidských práv, jež jsou obsaženy v názorech postav.

Abstract The bachelor thesis Human Rights Expressed by Voices of the Characters in Ntozake Shange´s Plays deals with stage plays by Ntozake Shange. The thesis contains information about the playwright, introduces typical features of her plays. The aim of the thesis is the analysis of character mental attitudes in the stage plays called For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Spell #7, A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes and in the stage play From Okra to Greens. As the part of the analysis there are also some monologues or poems that are used for performing on the stage. Specifically, it is about The Love Space Demands and I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes. The thesis compares female and male figure qualities or their character imperfections embedded in black surroundings with regard to cultural differences between the black and white community. The conclusion of the thesis forms the evaluation of the human right areas that are incorporated in the opinions of the characters.

Klíčová slova

černošská komunita, černošské ženy v literatuře, řeč těla, černošské bohémství, postavy v hrách Ntozake Shange, choreopoema, současné spisovatelky dramatu, diskriminace, rozmanitost, feminismus, lidové umění, role pohlaví, základní lidská práva, nesnášenlivost k ženám, fonetický pravopis, autorka divadelních her, rasismus, segregovaný

Keywords all-black community, black American women in literature, black bohemianism, body language, characters in Ntozake Shange´s plays, choreopoem, contemporary dramatists, discrimination, diversity, feminism, folk art, gender roles, human rights, mysogyny, phonetic spelling, playwright, racism, segregated

Prohlášení

„Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou bakalářskou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných literárních pramenů, dalších informací a zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů.“

……………………………………... V Brně, 20. března 2018 Jana Veselá, DiS.

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my gratitude to Mgr. Lucie Podroužková, Ph.D., for her support, patience, constructive criticism and valuable advice she provided as my supervisor.

“Women don't rape women,” she said. “And I began reading my poetry in women's bars. Not lesbian bars, necessarily, but women's bars, where they can go without being hassled or having someone try to pick them up. Anyhow those were the only places that would hire me, and when I was there I realized I was where I belonged.”

“I won't ever write a part for a white person,” she said. “They already own the theaters, so let them do it. I'll do my writing for black actors; David Mamet will write a whole lot of pieces for working‐class whites.”

“It was difficult and very unpleasant to do interviews, because they always were trying to paint me as a woman who hated black men, and I didn’t and don’t. But that was a difficult time for me.”

“I thought I was being punished because I hadn’t kept doing the writing I wanted to do. Then I decided that it was just fate, and my aunt had Parkinson’s, so even though one side of the family was having heart attacks, the other side of the family was having nerve disease, so I got the worst of both sides, I guess.”

Ntozake Shange

Content

1 Introduction ...... 9

2 Ntozake Shange, her life and beliefs ...... 111

3 Features of plays ...... 166

4 Plays and opinion-significant characters ...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.3

4.1 For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide Chyba! Záložka není definována.3

4.1.1 The Lady in Brown, Yellow, Red, Blue, Green, Purple and Orange and their main ideas…………………………………………………… 24

4.2 Spell #7...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.0

4.2.1 Lou………………………………………………………………………..30

4.3 The Love Space Demands…...………………………………………………..Chyba! Záložka není definována.4 4.4 I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes ...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.6

4.5 A Photograph: Lovers in Motion ...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.8

4.5.1 Sean David and Earl…………………………………………………..39 4.5.2 Michael, Nevada and Claire……………………………………………39 4.5.3 Analysis of the main ideas as to human rights…………………………41

4.6 Boogie Woogie Landscapes ...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.4

4.6.1 Layla and male and female night-life companions……………………..45

4.7 From Okra to Greens ...... 50

4.7.1 Analysis of the main ideas as to human rights……………………………53

5 Summary of the main topics concerning human rights ...... 56

6 Conclusion ...... Chyba! Záložka není definována.8

7 Works cited………………………………………………………………….……..61

1 Introduction This bachelor thesis deals with my own analysis of five plays of Ntozake Shange. There are many reasons why I have chosen her plays for the analysis. One of them is that I have watched the film For Colored Girls by Tylor Perry and I was charmed by it. So I bought the book For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf and read it even though I already knew all the plot twists. I was surprised with the way of Ntozake Shange´s style of writing. I wanted to discover more about her plays and especially to find out more about this author who identifies herself as a poet first and a playwright second.

Although Shange´s books are not for everybody and for the white the texts are difficult to understand because the texts contains a lot of information from cultural background of the black community, the students of English could find the books interesting as to spelling at least.

The next reason is that the book contains many strong ideas of the author that every reader should discover on their own. I thought it would be a good challenge for me to find the topics of the plays and find out the main ideas of the characters.

The third one is connected to the language of the book, which is demanding to read, and you have to read the text aloud. Moreover, no one book is translated into Czech so the possibility of the translation and working with the text is another reason to do my best and to focus on my skills and knowledge of understanding of the text and looking for the meaning of the lines. Why lines? Ntozake Shange is not the author of traditional plays but her plays are in a form of poems that are read on the stage. She managed to create her own style of writing which she terms as a choreopoem.

This bachelor thesis is divided into several parts. At the beginning, there is an introduction of the playwright. Then the thesis deals with the features of plays, explains the term “choreopoem” and works out some of the features into details.

The chapter four contains the plays and opinions of the characters. This part is the most important part of my analysis. The plays are introduced briefly. Each play contains examples of the ideas of the characters which are related to the human rights. The ideas are commented by me.

The aim of my thesis is to give a proper view of Ntozake Shange´s work and focus on her way of presenting the black community and expressing her wishes for better life for the black.

Ntozake Shange as the playwright aims her attention to all-black communities and is not frightened to name things that function or do not function for the black. She directs her attention to the issues that are not easy to be pronounced aloud and she manages to confront uncomfortable human conditions of black people. She focuses on the realities of black people and mainly on black women with the goal to change at least something.

2 Ntozake Shange, her life and beliefs In this chapter I will introduce Ntozake Shange. Firstly, I have to say that the author is reluctant to talk about her life and she does not like to comment her life at all. So the following pieces of information from her life are very scanty. Inspite of finding so little about her life, my research has revealed the following information. Furthermore, Gerald Nicosia – a biographer, historian, playwright and novelist, who has written Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, is currently working on a critical biography of Ntozake Shange. (Nicosia, 2018)

Ntozake Shange is one of America´s notable living writers. She is a poet, novelist, essay writer, memoir writer, writer-performer and also a playwright, although she does not like to be called like that. By her fellow performers she is called a musician and dancer, a children-book writer, a cookery book writer. She has worked as a director in theatres and collaborated with black theatre companies. She has been asked to work as a lecturer at many universities – Rice University, Villanova University, Yale, Howard, Douglass College of Rutgers University, the California State Colleges. She proclaimed herself as a feminist and has become a voice for black women that struggle for their equality, dignity and respect.

She won the Obie award, an Outer Critics Circle Award, an AUDELCO award, a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the National Black Theatre Festival´s Living Legend Award, a New Federal Theatre lifetime achievement award, the Medal of Excellence from Columbia University. She has been nominated for the Tony, Grammy and Emmy awards.

In recognition of her work and all of her cultural contributions, Shange was honoured with a proclamation of Ntozake Shange Day by Congressman Charles Rangel on 14th June 2014.

Jamara Wakefield termed Ntozake Shange as undoubtedly a black literary and performance icon who had helped pave the way for black women to take risks in the art of storytelling and who remains relevant in the cultural consciousness. (Wakefield, 2017)

Ntozake Shange was born as Paulette Williams into an upper middle-class African- American family on 18th October 1948. She was raised mainly in Trenton in New Jersey and St. Louis in Missouri. In 1971 she legally changed her name from Paulette Williams into Zulu name Ntozake Shange1. Ntozake means “she who comes with her own things” and Shange means “she who walks like a lion,” or a lioness. (Leland, “A Poet with Words Trapped Inside.”). The author when she talks about her uses nicknames “me Zake”. (Jackson R. Bryer 209)

Her father Paul T. Williams was an Air Force surgeon and her mother Eloise Williams a psychiatric social worker. She was the oldest of four children but with loving parents who gave their children all material security. Her home was regularly visited by cultural icons like Dizzie Gillepsie, Miles Davis and W.E.B. DuBois. In her childhood, she was affected by the Civil Rights Movement and forced school busing.

From an early age she was interested in poetry and with her sister Wanda – known as Ifa Bayeza attended poetry readings. Shange attended Barnard College and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), earning both a bachelor and master degree in American Studies. After finishing her studies she sustained a triple career as an educator, a performer/director, and a writer whose work draws heavily on her experiences of being a black female in America.

She came under the influence of a wide variety of radical movements – the anti-war Vietnam protests, feminism, the black arts and black liberation movements, the Puerto Rican liberation movement, and the Sixties sexual revolution. Like countless thousands of young people, Ntozake Shange was radicalized by the Vietnam War and the domestic turmoil of the late 1960's and early 70's. Unlike most of them, she has remained faithful to the ideas she formed at the time.

While she was living in California she taught humanities and women´s studies. She began to meet poets, teachers, performers, black and white feminists and began

1 pronounced en-toe-Zah-kee SHANG-gay 13

to perform her poetry, music and dance in bars and coffeehouses in San Francisco. She started writing plays and fiction.

In 1977 she married a musician David Murray who led her onstage five-piece group. She and Mr. Murray bound themselves to each other not in a church or civil ceremony, but under the only authority they recognize—that of their circle of poet and musician friends. She was married previously at 19 to a lawyer. They had a daughter Savannah Thulani Eloisa in 1981. The marriage did not last.

She left New York to be a professor of literature and creative writing in Houston. In 1989 she came back to New York to be closer to the New York arts scene. She studied Spanish and Portuguese to travel to Cuba, Angola and Mozambique.

In 2002 she wrote a biography of Muhammad Ali. She lives in Brooklyn in New York where her family members take care about her. She dedicates her time to working in nightclubs with musicians reading her poetry. She meditates and even she cannot dance any more, she tries to do a very clumsy mambo or just dance with her upper body as she mentioned in Jamara Wakefield´s interview.

Ntozake Shange has written piles of books. I will name some books of poetry: Nappy Edges, A Daughter´s Geography, Some Men, I Live in Music, People of Watts, Blood Rhythms, Poet Hero and Wild Beauty. She is the author of books for children: Whitewash, Float Like a Butterfly: Muhammad Ali, the Man Who Could Float Like a Butterfly and Sting Like a Bee, Daddy Says, Ellington Was Not a Street and Coretta Scott. The genre of novels is covered by books: Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, Betsey Brown, Liliane and Some sing, Some Cry.

Now I will focus on events in Shange´s life that, in my point of view, have influenced the topics in her plays. At the age of eight she with her family moved to the racially segregated city of St. Louis where she endured racism and racist attacks and also had to face overt racism and harassment. These experiences heavily influenced her work. Therefore, Ntozake Shange tries to describe the feeling of segregated people in her choreopoems.

The next negative occurrence that happened to Ntozake Shange was a rape but she declined to go into details of the crime. “I would lose my, mind if I did, [going into details] makes us unable to love … leaves us with memories that haunt us,” she stated in Tom Buckley´s interview. “She regards rape and child molestation as worse than murder. The penalty, in her view, ought to be castration or death, and in extreme cases both.” (Buckley, 1977) The theme of rape is presented also in her plays too.

She got married during her college years at 19 but she got divorced and after the separation she was depressed, with a strong sense of bitterness and alienation so this state of mind led her to commit suicide. She attempted suicide several times before focusing her rage against the limitations society imposes on black women. (“Poetry Foundation”) She commented these self-destructive tendencies in this way: “I wanted to see how far I could go in destroying myself. I drank Drano; I took alcohol and Valium; I drove my Volvo into the Pacific – all dramatic acts, but ridiculous and humorous even at the time.” (Lester 29)

In 1975 her first and most well-known play was produced — For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. The play was awarded by several awards, then in 1977 was published in a book form and in 2010 was adapted into a film called For Colored Girls directed by Tyler Perry. At that time she had to find the way how to cope with the fame.

The drastic change in Ntozake Shange´s life is her bad health condition. At the beginning she struggled with small strokes that left her temporarily unable to read. According to John Leland since 2011 she has suffered from neurological disorder called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy (CIDP) which takes control of her hands and feet and makes her unable to write type or write without difficulty. She had to relearn basic movements such as eating, speaking reading and walking and was under the physical therapy. (Leland, 2013)

For that reason she was not capable of writing for some years because the Dragon – speech recognition software didn´t work well because of her unclear pronunciation and the spell-check programme put her slang expressions and dialect into the standard 15

English. As Ntozake Shange says she “is caught in a tangle of technology, however despite the problems she feels very optimistic about her writing career.” (Wakefield, 2017)

3 Features of plays This chapter deals with the main features that are presented in Ntozake Shange´s plays. Although a lot of literal critics say that her plays are not plays, the author herself calls her plays choreopoems. Initially, all the choreopoems were the poems to be read on the stage. As Ntozake Shange declares in her interview that “she goes toward issues that are very serious and very hazardous to one´s emotional health…she is not following a plot line so much as she is following the surrender of her audience´s emotions to the dynamic of the realities of her characters.” (Bryer 206)

I chose five plays or just to be more precise – five choreopoems for my analysis. Specifically, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Spell #7, A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes and From Okra to Greens. As the part of the analysis there are also some monologues or poems that are used for performing on the stage - The Love Space Demands and I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes. The prose that is meant to be performed onstage is not a part of my analysis.

As I have mentioned above, Shange´s plays are not plays in the traditional sense. They are powerful with a strong message. Shange uses a piece of modern jazz called free jazz or new black music to accompany her plays, or in fact the music that suits for the play to underline the atmosphere or to separate individual scenes. Moreover, the spoken word is accompanied with dance. The author herself takes part in the performances as an actress or dancer. She is also the director of her performances, only when she is involved into the performance as an actor, she needs to have another director. If she is a director, she “tries to let the actors explore and find what they can find in the text and she does not do a line-by-line directorial activity with them. They are sentient creatures!” (Bryer 215)

Martin Gottfried claimed that “Shange is a wonderful poet, but she is not yet a playwright and does not create playable characters.” (qtd. in Lester 140) Shange´s response would be that “the choreopoem is appropriate for a specific audience and for particular cultural realities. The choreopoem is a genre that rejects artificial

dramatic conventions as a reflection of Eurocentric thoughts and experience. Hence, the seeming incoherence among the pieces within a work does not indicate Shange´s lack of skill as a playwright.” (Lester 141)

First of all, Ntozake Shange dedicates her performances to black and Latin audience. She does not write for the white. She thinks that “black and Latin people are not as much a reading-based culture…and they like to hear people perform.” (Bryer 210) In addition to it, Shange´s philosophy is to “make her audience trust her, be relaxed and then go into the depths of hell – and they can´t get out because they´re relaxed already!...She wants to take them to a place where they know that they have survived their own vulnerability and somebody else´s.” (Bryer 214)

Ntozake Shange uses a specific form for her plays. She calls the form as a choreopoem. The definition of the choreopoem is introduced by Neal A. Lester as ”a theatrical expression that combines poetry, prose, song, dance, and music – those elements that, according to Shange, outline a distinctly African American heritage – to arouse an emotional response in an audience. The choreopoem emerges from an African tradition of storytelling, rhythm, physical movement, and emotional catharsis.” (3)

The other features that are typical for the choreopoem are:

• a performer´s organic, physical relationship to the words and images of the poems • an element of improvisation • the words and dance become one-interwined • no linear plot or character´s development • the usage of unconventional American form • the creation of own rules of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, word usage, syntax • the manipulation of language to achieve raw emotions – passion, rage, anger, resentment, ecstasy, pain etc. • topics about “the alleged unspeakables” – celebration of a black female, rape, abortion, blatant or latent racism, misogyny and family pathologies.

In Shange´s opinion the choreopoem is “the genre that she feels best suits the subject matter of her dramatic writing, the form that best allows the resources of her African American heritage to be fully integrated into a unified theatre piece.” (Lester 11)

Another feature that appears in Ntozake Shange´s choreopoems is an eye spelling dialect. Therefore, the text of the plays is recognizable easily. Shange rarely uses a full stop, she divides phrases with / or oblique strokes, she does not use a capital letter at the beginning of the phrase, she avoids using a conventional written English.

On the other hand she uses a nonstandard spelling and punctuation: thru (through), cd (could), cdnt (couldn´t), wd (would), waz (was), abt (about), yr (your), yrself (yourself), ya (you), witta ( with a), lotsa (lot of), fulla (full of), alla (all of), kinda (kind of), uv (of), enuf (enough), tonite (tonight), miz (miss), cuz (because), ´fore (before), cept (except), awready (already), i thot ( I thought), tol me (told me), gd (good), cook em (cook them), lissin (listen), dontchu (don´t you), ´ma see (I am going to see), aint (isn´t), caint (can´t), lemme (let me), chirren (children), critturs (creatures), po (poor), mo (more), git (get).

Ntozake Shange omits the letter G at the end of the verbs, nouns or pronouns: bein, makin, buildin or bldgs (buildings), blvd (boulevard), nothing and uses colloquial expressions: wanna, gonna, gotta, haveta (have to), hadda (had to). She writes only i everywhere in the sentence, she does not use the apostrophe: didnt, cant, dont, waznt, shdnt.

The author does not keep to grammatical rules: a emerald chain, a easy fuck, my grandma dont talk, the woman dont stand up, he jump, he close he eye, the sky want to jam, we waz dancing. Ntozake Shange takes a stand why she writes in this way: “Poems where all the first letters are capitalized bore me, I like the idea that letters dance. ... I need some visual stimulation, so that reading becomes not just a passive act and more than an intellectual activity, but demands rigorous participation.” (Shange, “Poetry Foundation”)

The form of the text could be like that: Git down on the floor/ niggah/ face down/ on the floor/ niggah…… sing me a reggae dirge/ i wanna hear/ oh/ sing me now “i am what i am i am i am i am”/ cuz i & i/ gonna shoot Peter Tosh tonight/ yeah/ i & i/ gonna cut the light/ right outta his sight/ tonight/ sing/ me/ now “i am what i am i am i am i am” Down on the floor/ niggah/ face down on the floor/ sing me a last breath reggae/ niggah hey/ Peter sing me/ a liberation song. (Ntozake Shange, Plays: 1, 176)

Shange´s aim for her text look is to engage the reader, to struggle the text and even better to read the text aloud. As Shange proclaims: “the spellings reflect language as I hear it. ... the structure is connected to the music I hear beneath the words.” (Shange, “Poetry Foundation”)

When Shange needs to emphasize something, she recourses to capitalization or to refrains: she kept screaming WHAT ARE YOU DOING WHAT ARE YOU DOING to me (Okra 25)

Shange´s texts are full of vulgar expressions or colloquial expressions: i´ma see yr ass tonite, niggah (nigger = offensive word in English, refers to a black person), folks, dick, womb, cunt, pussy, ass, muthafuckah (= motherfucker), bitch, faggot, pimp, pals, take up the slack for my life, stay all nervous and fidgety, a wad of money, hincty (snobbish in slang), smootch, no farina & topsy (= topsy-turvy), lay off, filth, crooner, soony, trinkets.

Shange´s plays are connected with a dance expression. The dance underlines the atmosphere of the play, divides the individual sections of the play. The playwright uses a ritual dance, sometimes the dance is a means of a narration of a fairy tale. The narration of a fairy tale is illustrated in the following extract: “broken boats/ bones & spit/ useless solitary legs/ legs & splintered trees/ winds & sea jumped thru flesh & breath twenty men tossed on shore/ some in clothes soppin in seaweed/ others with swollen beeding bodies/ the storm had thrown them in a strange land/ they were lookin for the siver snake/ they knew the silver snake kept a woman whose kiss wd make hunger disappear & wounds heal/ the woman who belonged to the star-lit snake swung her ankle from an acacia tree in the face of the shipwrecked sailors/ they stood afraid/ the woman´s toes rested on the scarlet tongue of a snake so bright/ the night drew back & ran off with the sea/ while the star-lit silver snake kisst the corners of her mouth/ darin the universe to take her” (“A Photograph: Lovers in Motion”, 33-34)

The dance can evoke the atmosphere from a tribe. There is a dancing scene at the beginning of the play called From Okra to Greens/A Different Kinda Love Story. It is a mixture of Sikh meditation with movements from the Ashanti, Yoruba or Ewe tribes. On the top of that, a vernacular black dance is introduced there too. Between the individual extracts a traditional Brazilian samba is danced or even the dancers perform a capoeira ritual. “Dancers dramatize the action as well as announce scenes, while music complements characters´words and actions.” (Lester 225)

The reader of Shange´s plays should be aware of some important personalities mainly from Black American culture: Diane Arbus (a Jewish photographer), Cartier-Bresson (a French photographer), Dorothea Lange (a US photographer), Garvey (a Jamaican writer), Du Bois (a poet), B. B. King (a Black American jazz musician), Eric Dolphy (a Black American jazz alto saxophonist, flautist and bass clarinetist), David Murray (a Black American), Tosh Marley & Wailer (a Jamaican reggae music group), Blind Lemon Jefferson (a Black American blues and gospel singer), James Brown (a Black American singer, Paul Robeson (an American bass singer), Ray Barretto (a Latin jazz percussionist), Willie Colon (a Nuyorican = a New York-born Puerto Rican salsa musician), the Commodores (US funk/soul group), Ray Drummond ( a jazz bassist), Gylan Kain (a Black American poet and playwright), Bobby Timmons (a Black America pianist), Virgil Aikens (a Black American boxer), Alexadre Dumas (a French writer), Kwame Nkrumal (the 1st president of Ghana), Haile Selassie (the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974), Ho Chi Minh (a Vietnamese communist revolutionary leader), Patrice Lumumba (a Congolese politician and African nationalist leader), Daniel Ortega (a Nicaraguan politician), Papa Legbé ( a loa in Haitian Vodou).

In Shange´s plays there are discussed historical events such as year 1843 (Slave Trade Act); Haitian revolution with Alexander Petion who was the Prince of Liberation and 1st president of Haiti.

It is possible to encounter also geographical terms: Itaparica (the entrance island of Todos in Brazil), Ipanema (a quarter in Rio de Janeiro), Copacabana (a famous beach in Brazil), Rocinha (the largest favela in Brazil), Curaçao (an island 65 km from Venezuela), Port-au-prince (the capital of Haiti), Conroe (a city in Texas).

From time to time there exist some foreign expressions in the text: French expressions - une femme brune (a brown woman), ou sent-ils maintenant ? (Where do they feel now?), les haitiennes (Haitians), la liberté (liberty), l´égalité (equality), la fraternité (fraternity), le negre marron (a brown nigger), les vaches espagnoles (Spanish cows), nos voisins (our neighbours), le palais national (national palace), aux téâtres (in theatres), aux restaurants (in restaurants), aux musées (in museums), personne ne bouge pas sans la puissance des dieux (no one moves

without the power of Gods)/ venez ici (come here), les enfants ne savent que la mort (children know ony the death), tes femmes marchent avec la faim (your women go hungry), tes hommes travaillent sans raison (your men work without any reason), tes vieux sont fatigués (the old are exhausted), l´haiti a besoin de la liberté (Haiti needs some liberty); Spanish expressions – jibarita (a Spanish dancer), merengue (a kind of Latin dance), te amo (I love you), una luna loca (a mad moon), ahorita (now), amarillo (yellow), maricon (faggot). There are also some expressions connected to American background: buick (an American car), picaninnies (dark-skinned children), Pinkerton Guard (a national detective agency, a private security guard in 1850).

The Shange´s plays are full of visions of love and pain between black women and black men. Shange allows her characters to speak of their sexuality using candour erotic imagery. (Lester 230) Men´s speeches are more intercourse-focussed and women are more romance-focussed. The plays contain scenes of involuntary sexual commitment or sexual abuse: my child is sleeping/ she doesnt know where we are & some man/ wants to kiss my thighs/ roll his tongue around my navel/ put his hands all up my ass & this place is in my throat (Okra 39); or the themes of male insensitivity and a lot of violent scenes run through her work. (Buckley 6).

4 Plays and opinion-significant characters In this chapter I will introduce the plays in which I will look for the ideas that characterize specific cultural realities in a black community. As I mentioned in previous chapter 3, Ntozake Shange does not dedicate her choreopoems to the white audience. And what is even more interesting, she describes disastrous situations in black families even though she had the possibility to spend her childhood in a family of educated parents who were in touch with poets and musicians.

4.1 For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide/ When The Rainbow Is Enuf (1976) had an enormous success on Broadway in 1976-77 and was considered a landmark not just in American theatre but also in theatre worldwide. It won an Obie award. At the beginning Shange “did not envision performing [the poems] as theatre, she read the individual poems in women´s bars in California.” (Lester 21)

Ntozake Shange, who was a solo spoken-artist, was convinced by her sister Ifa Bayeza to allow others to speak her words. She started to cooperate with a director Oz Scott who formed a group of dancers including seven women – the rainbow: Ntozake Shange, Paula moss, Aku Kadogo, Laurie Carlos, Trazana Beverley, Janet League and Rise Collins. The dancers dramatize poems that recall encounters with their classmates, lovers, rapists, abortionists, and latent killers. The women survive abuse and disappointment and come to recognize in each other the promise of a better future.

“The poems introduce the girls to other kinds of people of colour, other worlds. The poems talk about cruelty, we face alone, however then we discover that by sharing with each other we find strength to go on.” (“For Colored Girls” – preface, 3) Firstly, Shange “intended only to celebrate and share with other women – especially black women – her personal experiences as a black female.” (Lester 21)

The play is dedicated literally for “colored girls”, which to Shange means women- centered, but “the reaction from black men to For Colored Girls was in a way very

much like the white reaction to black power. In reality, there are not that many negative images of black men in [this play].” (“For Colored Girls” – preface, 11)

At the beginning of the choreopoem the scene is covered in dark, only a dim blue light is spotted. All seven characters come to the scene and freeze in postures of distress. The scene opens lady in brown who comes to life. And then pass the word to lady in red. All actresses take the turn to present their speech.

The play consists of monologues in poems accompanied with dancing. The monologues celebrate the identity of black women. “The seven women reclaim their own space in their move toward realized selfhood.” (Lester 24) Shange uses also nursery rhymes that black girls are taught – for example “little sally walker”.

Shange uses the term “colored” because “[this term has] a reality for her…it connotatively distinguishes blacks from whites in terms of skin ton…used by blacks it brings a sense of community and a unique cultural richness and identity. [She] hated being referred to as an American citizen.” (Lester 24)

As Lester mentions the author created this play for girls because she wanted “to [unravel] some of the mysteries of her own experiences as an adolescent developing into and embracing black womanhood, she wanted them to know what it was truthfully like to be a grown woman.” (23) The play is primarily dedicated to girls, but also to innocent and naïve adult female or adult women unable to accept themselves as complete individuals.

4.1.1 The Lady in Brown, Yellow, Red, Blue, Green, Purple and Orange and their main ideas In this play female characters are named according to colours of the rainbow, except of two colours: purple and brown which are non-rainbow colours. On that account, we distinguish the Lady in Brown, the Lady in Yellow, the Lady in Blue, the Lady in Orange, the Lady in Purple, the Lady in Red, the Lady in Green. Based on Shange´s explanation “purple represents indigo and violet and the brown colour characterizes

the skin of black people and connects these “colored” girls with fundamental elements of earth . . . it is the colour that prevails mood of the piece – the gloom and despair.” (Lester 31)

The play begins with the monologue of the Lady in Brown who does not agree with the situation of young black girls who are treated badly, no one listens to them or give them the space for saying their opinions aloud. She recalls for human rights for black people: are we ghouls?/ children of horror?/ the joke? are we animals?/ have we gone crazy? (18) She calls for the possibility for a black girl to be let speak and to be treated well: sing her song of life/ she´s been dead so long/ closed in silence so long/ she doesn´t know the sound/ of her own voice . . . let her be born & handled warmly. (18-19)

The Lady in Yellow monologue concerns her 1st sexual experience with Bobby Mills – her cousin while celebrating their graduation. She felt happy about it: doin nasty ol tricks i´d been thinkin since may/ cuz graduation nite had to be hot & i waz the only virgin (23) The Lady in yellow has a difficulty to accept the role of a woman and a coloured woman in the society: but bein alive &bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point/ my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender (59) In both parts mentioned above Shange wanted to point out how social restraints prohibit female sexual freedom this monologue celebrates a woman´s conscious decision to act upon her sexual excitement.

The Lady in Blue in her sixteen ran off to the south Bronx to meet her boyfriend Willie Colon and dance. Her dad was thought to be Puerto Rican: [he] waz just regular niggah wit hints of Spanish (25) She is energetic, loving music and dance. She could fall in love with a man only because of his ability to dance: i kept smilin &right on steppin/ if he cd lead i waz ready to dance/ if he cdnt lead . . . i waz twirlin hippin givin much quick feet . . . oyè négro/ te amo mas que/ when you play yr flute. (26-27) As Lester in his study cites that “dance is a survival too; and for blacks especially, it is a liberating force.” (42)

The Lady in Blue was raped by friend, she felt so ashamed that she did not tell anybody and had to face the situation if to keep her pregnancy too. The Lady in Blue suffers from also a metaphoric rape – abortion. There is the extract which refers to her feelings: tubes tables white washed windows grime from age wiped over once legs spread anxious eyes crawling up on me eyes rollin in my thighs metal hrses gnawin my womb dead mice fall from my mouth i really didnt mean to i really didnt think i cd just one day ff . . . get offa me alla this blood bones shattered like soft ice-cream cones. (36)

Shange puts in the language of this poem a fear, physical and psychological harm of a rape victim. The Lady in Blue begs for a man who is able to be a loving partner, a shoulder to rely on. She accuses men of doing something wrong and pretending to be sorry, the sorry should be meant seriously and used rarely: one thing i dont need/ is any more apologies . . . you were always inconsistent/ doin something &then bein sorry/ beatin my heart to death/ talkin bout you sorry . . . i cant use another sorry/ next time/ you should admit/ you´re mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count straight out/ steada bein sorry alla the time/ enjoy bein yrself. (67-68)

The Lady in Red – is disappointed by her lover. She was so much in love but still wanting the best for her, she counts also the months, weeks and days for getting to know how long she has been in love with this man: this waz an experiment/ to see how selfish i cd be . . . if i cd stand not being wanted/ when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot. (28)

The Lady in Red retells a story about a woman who waz hot/ a deliberate coquette/ who never did without/ what she wanted & she wanted to be unforgettable/ she wanted to be a memory/ a wound to every man. (46) Shange gives us the picture of an emancipated woman, who plays with men, who uses the situation to have a sex with them but then wants to have her space and freedom. you´ll have to go now/ i´ve a lot of work to do/ & i cant with a man around/ here are yr pants/ there´s coffee on the stove/ its been very nice/ but i cant see you again/ you got what yu came for/ didn’t you (48)

The Lady in Red is a narrator of another story about a woman called crystal whose husband Beau Willie Brown behaves in a cruel way and she has to endure domestic violence. “beau most beat her to death when she tol him/ she still gotta scar under her right tit where he cut her up/ still crystal went right on & had the baby/ so now beau willie had two children . . . crystal had gone &got a court order saying beau willie brown had no access to his children/ if he showed his face he waz subject to arrest/ shit/ she´d been in his ass to marry her” (80-81)

Crystal´s relationship with Beau Willie Brown has an unexpected end. How could a father hurt his children only to hurt his partner. It is the act of pure madness. “as soon as crystal let the baby outta her arms/ beau jumped up a laughin & a giggling/ a hootin & a hollerin . . . ya give me back my kids/ he kicked the screen outta the window/ & held the kids offa the sill/ you gonna marry me/ yeh, i´ll marry ya . . . he looked from where the kids were hangin from the fifth story. . . he started sweatin like he did in Baghdad . . . i stood by beau in the window/ with naomi reaching for me/ & Kwame screamin mommy mommy from the fifth story/ but i cd only whisper/ & he droped em.” (83-84)

Even if Beau Willie Brown could be seen as a victim of a racist country and country´s social and legal system for which he has fought as a Vietnam veteran, his act of dropping his children means the display of his authority over Crystal.

The Lady in Orange is into music too. She describes her personal story that is strongly unenviable: cuz i have died in a real way . . . i used to joke abt when i waz messin round/ but a real dead lovin is here for you now/ cuz i don’t know anymore/ how to avoid my own face wet wit my tears/ cuz i had convinced myself colored girls had no right to sorrow/ & i lived &loved that way & kept sorrow on the curb . . . i cdnt stand bein sorry & colored at the same time/ it´s so redundant in the modern world. (57)

The Lady in Purple recounts a story about a woman who was in love – in fact about herself, she suffers for love: those scars i had hidden wit smiles . . . i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me . . . i want you to love me/ let me love you/ i don’t wanna dance wit ghosts/ snuggle lovers i made up in my drunkenness. (58)

The Lady in Green called Sechita who was the name of Egyptian goddess of creativity and filth. She was a promiscuous woman: her splendid/ red garters . . . threw her heavy hair in a coil over her neck/ sechita/ goddess/ of love . . . performing the rites/ the conjuring of men . . . thru the nite/ catchin stars tween her toes. (39) She used her attractiveness to reverse the gender roles and receive her revenge.

All the women from the choreopoem help each other, they encourage themselves. The Lady in Blue establishes a demanding topic – a rape and a rapist friend. All of them say who is the rapist: a rapist is always to be a stranger, a man wit obvious problems or [a man with] a lil dick or a strong mother (31-32) but very often there are these men friends of ours or men who know us (33). The topic about a latent rape is courageous to bring to discuss. There is an enormous amount of cases that women are worried to announce out of the fear not to be believed or the self-accusation for provoking such attacks. Shange warns women of kind men and that they have to be cautious: cuz it turns out the nature of rape has changed . . . we cd even have em over fr dinner & get raped in our own houses by invitation a friend. (lady in red, 34-35)

Another strong feeling that can unite women is the fear of danger in the night. i usedta be in the world a woman in the world i hadda right to the world then i moved to harlem for the set-up a universe six blocks of cruelty piled up on itself a tunnel closing. (53)

A goup of them retells a story about a woman whose boyfriend infected her with AIDS. whadda ya mean you tested positive for aids/ i dont have no goddamnaids. (76)

Shange´s advice to get out of the vicious circle is: we deal wit emotion too much/ so why don’t we go on ahead & be white then. (58)

The monologue by the Lady in Green called “somebody almost walked off wid alla my stuff is powerful and seen not as a lament but a fierce declaration of independence.” (Shange, “For Colored Girls” – preface, 4) somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff/ &i waz standin there/ lookin at myself/ the whole time & it waznt a spirit took my stuff/ waz a man whose ego walked round like Rodan´s shadow/ waz a man faster in my innocence/ waz a lover/ i made too much room for/ almost run off wit alla my stuff . . . did you know somebody almost got away with me/ me in a plastic bag under their arm/ me. (65) The playwright criticizes women that they are generous, put the needs of men first and that they should remember to take care of them and to appreciate themselves.

Each woman´s specific colour has little to do with what a character actually says or experiences. There is a moment when the story is segmented among more ladies - for example the story about HIV testing. Thematically, the play moves “from innocence to experience, from youth to adulthood, from ignorance to knowledge, from ignorance of self to self-knowledge, from darkness to light, from particular women´s experiences to a collective black female experience.” (Lester 34)

4.2 Spell #7 It is the second theatre piece that focuses on subtle and overt manifestation of racism in America and deals with monologues about stereotypes and misconceptions concerning versus black community.

The play is opened with a huge black-face mask hanging from the ceiling. A group of dancers in minstrel masks is on the stage. The masks protect them. When they have the mask, they are protected, the only one who throws away the mask is Alec. The monologues are said by a black company of actors, poets and performers. The setting of the play is in a bar. The characters of the play are actors and actresses, a dancer and a poet. There a bartender Eli who is a man. Alec, Bettina, Lilly, Natalie, Ross and Maxine create a group of artists.

4.2.1 Lou – the magician and Alec with other company performers Lou is a practising magician and declares himself as a Mr. Interlocutor. He opens the play with a story about his father, who was a magician too, but had to give up this job after a strange child´s demand: a child from the 3rd grade/ asked to be made white/ on the spot (71). Lou in contrary explains that “aint no colored magician in his right mind/ gonna make you white/ I mean/ this is blk magic” (72) and Lou gives a promise “you gonna be colored all yr life & you gonna love it.” (72) It is a high form of the irony.

Then he adds in exasperation: why dont you go on & integrate a german-american school in st.louis in 1955 (73); why dontchu go on & live my life for me/ i didnt want certain moments at all/ i´d give them to anybody (75)

During the analysis of the choreopoem, I have to say, that there are other figures except of Lou, but again Spell #7 has no plot and for that reason I will present some main ideas from the first and the second act, which I will arrange according to the common topic.

The first act is filled up with: 1) allusions against black: a) my face enuf to scare anyone i passed/ gee/ a colored kid. (Alec 74) b) but understand we speak English carefully & perfect antillean French/ our toilets are disinfected/ the plants here to me sing every morning/ come to my kitchen my parlor even my bed/ i sleep on satin. (Eli 76) c) the burglar alarm/ armed guards vault from the east side/ if i am in danger/ a siren shouts/ you are welcome/ to my kingdom/ my city/ my self/ but yr presence must not disturb these inhabitants. (Eli 76) d) how the hell is she gonna play lady mackbeth and mackbeth´s a white dude? (Eli 78) e) when you gonna see the queen of England/ you polish yr nails. (Bettina 83)

2) a strong criticism of the whites: a) oh how they love blood (Lilly 79) b) with their save America t-shirts & those chirren who score higher on IQ tests for the white chirren who speak English (Eli 79) c) we honor our guests/ if it costs us all we got (Natalie 82)

3) a lot of ideas are aimed against women: a) you aint goin noplace/ you an ol bitch/ shd be at home wit ur kids. (Maxine 85)

4) opinions encouraging black women to have fun and enjoy the life: a) i´m enthusiastic/ and i´m gonna have me a gooood/ ol time (Maxine 86) b) she really tended her own self carefully (Alec 92)

5) a celebration of women´s strength: a) i would have this child/ myself/ & no one wd ever claim him/ cept me cuz i waz a low-down thing. (Natalie 93) b) so you were always with him/ & you didnt mind/ you knew this waz yr baby/ myself/ & you cuddled him/ carried him all over the house with you all day/ no matter/ what. (Alec 95)

6) the importance of being a black artist who is accepted by a society: a) i shout & sigh/ i am a poet/i write poems/ i make words cartwheel & somersault down pages/ outta my mouth come visions distilled like bootleg whiskey. (Eli 89) b) i´m gonna alter my social & professional life dramatically. (Lilly 90)

In the second act of the choreopoem the main topics are concerned about: 1) the ability to speak English correctly: a) that man asked us where we learned to speak English so well (Natalie 97) b) i cdnt say i learned it/ cuz niggahs cant learn (Lilly 97)

2) the right of the free movement: a) the big reasons being immigration restrictions & unemployment. nowadays, immigration restrictions of every kind apply to any non-european persons who want to go there from here. (Lou 98) b) i had to come back to new York cuz of immigration restrictions &high unemployment among black American sculptors abroad. (Ross 104)

3) inequality between black and white races: a) whole world knows that nobody loves the black woman like they love farrah fawcett-majors. the whole world dont turn out for a dead black woman like they did for marilyn monroe. (Lou 100) b) everybody knows the black woman from there is not treated as a princess/ as a jewel/ a cherished lover. (Lou 101) c) cuz today i´m gonna be a white girl/ i´ll retroactively wake up myself…do they get up being glad they aint niggahs? (Natalie 111) d) terrible how god gave those colored women such clear complexions/ it take em years to develop wrinkles. (Natalie 112) e) can i survive another day of this culturally condoned incompetence? (Natalie 113)

4) also black women can be educated and intelligent: i never saw a black woman reading nietzsche. (Ross 103)

5) Shange lays stress on the security of women: a) a woman traveling alone is an affront to the non-european man who is known the world over. (Lou 102)

6) Shange is against putting more importance for physical love than psychological: a) but that´s just my body/ you started off saying you loved me & now i see it´s just my body. (Lou 107)

7) taking advantages of women by men: a) i´m not going on the road so you can fuck all these aspiring actresses. (Natalie 108) b) if you don’t go on the road i´ll still be fuckin em/ but you & me/ we´ll be in trouble/ you understand? (Ross 108)

8) The end of the choreopoem is finished by an emancipation proclamation. Shange wants the white to apologize for all injustice: a) just three minutes for our lives/ just three minutes of silence. (Alec 110) b) last spring this niggah from the Midwest asked for president carter to say he waz sorry for that forgettable phenomenon/ slavery/ which brought us all together. (Alec 110) c) i dont get any pleasure from nobody watchin me trying to be a slave i once waz. (Alec 110)

9) Shange complains about the bad behaviour of the white and black people: a) only white people hurt little colored girls or grown colored women/ my mama told me only white people had social disease & molested children…but i found out that the colored folks knew abt the same vicious & disease-ridden passions that the white folks knew. (Natalie 115) b) the pain i succumbed to each time a colored person did something that i believed only white people did waz staggering my entire life seems to be worthless/ if my own folks aren’t better than white folks. (Natalie 115)

10) Shange makes an appel to the black to behave in a suitable way and not to disgrace the black race: i buy gold with a vengeance/ each time someone appropriates my space or my time without permission/ each time someone is discourteous or actually cruel to me/ if my mind is not respected/ my body toyed with/ i buy gold & weep. (Natalie 115)

4.3 The Love Space Demands The Love Space Demands includes nine choreopoems on celibacy, sexuality, monogamy. It uncovers some subjects that have been a taboo for a long time in the black community.

Even tho yr sampler broke down on you is a celebration of love and animality: you know where my beauty marks are all; my own rhythm section/ that petal openin every time yr lips/ let love/ cada vez/ yr lips let love fall/ all over. The lover lures the other lover.

The poem Serial monogamy is a philosophical reflection on the topic of a serial monogamy in an ironic way. Ntozake Shange asks a question that makes us think: How does the concept of infinity relate to a skilled serial monogamist/ & can that person consider a diversionary escapade a serial one night stand? Can a consistent serial monogamist have one/ several/ or myriad relationships that broach every pore of one´s body so long as there is no penetration? Shange uncovers the taboo that also black women have their own needs and do not need to be ashamed of them, she defends the right of every woman for her own sexuality: your name must be paradise/ if i was to grin or tingle/ even get a lil happy/ hearin me & paradise/ now synonyms does that make a scarlet woman? if i wear a red dress that makes someone else hot/ does that put me out the frying pan & into the fire?

Intermittent celibacy is dedicated to the topic of a sexual intercourse and to the topic that nobody speaks about, it´s a masturbation: can you touch yrself & when you do/ do you rush to say get thee behind me Satan? Ntozake Shange encourages women not

to be feared to express their sexual appetite and that women have the right to be sexually free.

In the poem Chastening with Honey the author criticizes all the religions of the world which come with chastening and do not teach how to handle the passion that she considers as the essence of life.

A Third Generation Geechee Myth For Yr Birthday uses terms of nature (we fall from the stars, music in the air, a storm is coming, we glide from planet to planet, severely colored stratospheres) to describe the creation of the black. It is a poetic way to encourage the black to be proud of their origin as it is seen in this short extract: we all/ come gallopin out the heavens to our mothers´ bellies/ & the niggah blue night/ you was wendin yo way down heah . . . flew/ out yr mother´s mouth you/ burst out her body & that´s how/ you come to be a reed man.

In Loosening Strings or Give Me an ´A´ Ntozake Shange glorifies the black people, their cultural erudition and their willingness to do the best. The writer expresses her disagreement that the black artists are only discovered by the white: cuz niggahs aint in search of/ we/ just get discovered. In this poem she emphasizes again not to forget the roots: yes/ i never forgot where i came from & nobody misses me cuz/ i never left in search of an artist.

MESL (Male English As a Second Language): in Defense of Bilingualism is a poem whose headline does not suit to the content of the poem properly. It is not about the bilingualism in a language terminology but the bilingualism is a symbol of a communication in a relationship between a man and a woman. For the description of the relationship Ntozake Shange utilizes sport terms: i don´t wanta win/ necessarily/ that´d be nice/ but it´s how you say/”engagée”/ that stirs me & scares you/ in my ballpark/ nobody´s decimated/ nobody´s a loser/ but it can get rough. The lines that are taken from the poem show Ntozake Shange´s dreams about an equal relationship between man and his woman. The author mentions questions that women ask as to their relationships, for example why all problems in a relationship are solved in bed: everything seems to work out when we talk it over in bed.

In the poem called Devotion to One Lover or Another Ntozake Shange talks about love, she describes her ritual of bathing which is a symbolic ritual for preserving the love: i bathe in gardenia scented water/ amaryllis fricia & white tulips. Ntozake Shange uses the symbolism of flowers and flower petals to stress the fact that the love is as fragile as the flower petals are. In this poem there is a line: we all know white folks carry lice, in the sense that some flowers – the white men present a danger for a black woman, they have different habits and customs and maintain a relationship in this case could be demanding. Ntozake Shange narrates a story about a woman lover who is hot- tempered: i am not awash in lovers/ quite like that/ it´s the ones i cursed/ threw bottles at/ & plain made myself a ravin fool over/ they understand my survival/ that i´m still here. The author concludes the poem with a contemplation that to be colored & in love means to be in mortal danger. The symbol of bathing to stay clean could be the symbol of using a prophylactic.

The last poem “If I Go All the Way without You where Would I Go?” is the description of a physical love by means of nature vocabulary. There are at least a few examples of the figurative expressions: to the right side of venus/ my tongue/ tropical lightenin/ rush/ now/ softly/ tween my toes/ the sea ebb; the Mississippi delta/ tween my thights yr second touch; i lay next to you/ the undertow at carmel/ the russian river; if you kiss me like that/ i´m browned wetlands yr lips/ invite the moon/ to meander. The whole text represents the love in all shapes: when the lovers feel excitement, desire, passion, expectation and courage in the relationship.

4.4 I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes is a performance piece in a form of five monologues and four dance sequences whose parts are enriched with composition fragments of Eric Dolphy who was a flute and bass clarinet virtuoso from Los Angeles. The monologues are focused on the life in Black community. The names of the individual monologues are: I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes, Crack Annie, Running Backwards/Conroe to Canarsie and Open up/This is the Police.

In the first monologue called I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes there is depicted a scene with a child who is maltreated and forced to beg by his father: the child´s tumbling/ 37

from one pole to the next/ his filthy tattered snowsuit mo accustomed/ to bein spat on/ than makin angels/ the cold nibbles his naked lil feet/ he cries/ this baby who can barely walk/ cuz he simply is too young. The narrator of the poem simply describes the scenes and adds direct speeches of the child´s father: we gonna make some money tonight/ we gonna git fired up/ awright/ yeah; we heah is homeless & we´d like ya to give us/ whatever the lord moves ya to do. Some actions are difficult to believe: whack/ cross the baby´s head wit knuckles/ leavin a puffed up bleedin space/ neath the right eye & the baby tries to smile; ya know how kids are/ sometimes/ ya gotta be a lil hard on em.

In the second monologue with the name Crack Annie a drug addicted mother confesses from a horrible crime she has committed on her 7-year-old daughter Berneatha. This mother offered her daughter to a drug dealer, whose demand was to have a sex with a virgin and as a reward to bring her mother some crack. The whole monologue is emotionally strong: some new pussy/ waz my daughter/ lemme take that back/ i didn´t have non/ any new pussy/ so i took me some/ & it just happened to be berneatha/ my daughter/ &he swore he´d give me twenty-five dollars & a whole fifty cent of crack; she caint get pregnant/ shit/ she only seven years old. This mother feels sorry for everything and becomes aware of her act: but lord i waz wrong . . . so lord throw me into hell befo berneatha is so growed.

In both of these monologues Ntozake Shange reveals social conditions in which children are those who pay the highest price for their parents´ social decline. These examples are deterrent and Ntozake Shange aims to highlight the right of the children for a carefree childhood.

In the third monologue Running Backwards/Conroe to Canarsie Ntozake Shange accuses the white for blaming the black for being the murderers when a dead white girl is found: a niggah did it/ had to be/ the Lord smite evil out the hands of white folks/ that´s how come/ they know/ a niggah did it. The author criticizes a hostile mood of the whites towards the black and how the white are obsessed with lynching the black because the white do not want them to live in the same neighbourhood, to visit the same restaurants: Hey Niggah! That´s right, niggah. I been waitin for this a long time. Run, niggah, run! I go ya this time! The threats by the white are expressed also in the phrases such as: we chased em/ like runnin dogs/ cause a nigger´sgot to know/

not to come around Howard Beach . . . ya know/ get em before they get you/ cause once ya let one in/ you can´t stop it/ they´re like roaches.

In the last monologue called Open up/This is the Police Ntozake Shange mentions a case when a mother is separated from her child using the system of AFDC (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). This system helped to children whose families had low or no income. Moreover, in this part the humiliation of the black is mentioned too: Git down on the floor/ niggah/ face down/ on the floor/ niggah . . . sing me a reggae dirge/ i wanna hear/ oh/ sing me now.

4.5 A Photograph: Lovers in Motion “Aside from music, photography is the medium closest to poetry… poetry is not about the whole world, but about the density of a moment. Photography also gives you the density of truth. Poems are not novels and photographs are not films.” (Buckley, “The Three Stages of Ntozake Shange”)

A Photograph: Lovers in Motion with the play´s subtitle A Study in Cruelty narrates a life of a central character - an aspiring black photographer Sean. The play consists of two acts. The first act has twelve scenes and the second act has five scenes.

In this choreopoem there is a plot and characters are presented with a linear narrative. The play reflects Sean´s treatment of the three women in his life: Michael, Nevada and Claire. He plays with women. Sean´s main lover is Michael who is a dancer. She is told not to be the only one but she copes with the situation surprisingly well. The two women appear in Sean´s life. Claire wants to make some problems. She is made to be kicked off the flat using Michael´s intelligence by Sean. Michael wants Sean to love his work and to be proud of his roots, to rely on himself not on Nevada. Nevada is rather obsessed by Sean. Michael sees in Sean the qualities and his will to be loved. Sean had a bad childhood, his father did not take care about him and he all the frustration comes from his childhood. In this play a denouement is included in the last scene number five in the second act. To be correct, I will leave the space for personal reading. Hence I do not reveal the ending of the play.

The only thing I am supposed to say, that all characters will meet in the last scene and we will be surprised with the announcement of Sean for Michael.

Setting: The play is set into a flat in San Francisco. The owner of the flat is a photographer Sean whose aim is to become a famous photographer who will not have to care about money.

4.5.1 Sean David and Earl Sean David is a photographer, self-conceited, vain, ironical and mocking, he likes talking big, praises highly his work. He behaves authoritative to Michael who positively influences him to show more of his self-worth. Sean compares his life to the life of Alexandre Dumas, who he considers to be his icon. Lester in his study provides that “Sean . . . defines success in terms of materialism, and manhood as having multiple sex partners. Sean also celebrates Dumas´move from anonymity as a lowly clerk who dared to dream to be a renowned author. Dumas´dreams from the basis of Sean´s dream of moving from his position as a lowly “niggah” to that of the world´s greatest photographer.” (Lester 146)

Earl is Sean´s friend, he dates his ex-friend Claire but wants to finish their relationship. Earl supports Sean in everything, he protects his love affairs. He is attracted by Claire and finally Sean and rejected by both of them. He feels sorry for Nevada that she humiliates herself. nevada/ you know yr lovely/ &shd be handled gently (Earl 33) On day Earl is persuaded by Sean to put some interest in Nevada, he could married Nevada and in that way both of them, Earl and Sean could have their dreams come true.

4.5.2 Michael, Nevada and Claire They are female characters. Nevada and Claire are Sean´s ex-friends. Michael is a present lover, not naïve, she tries to see the reality. ….somebody´s been sleepin here recently/ just like me … i cant lay in any old body´s morning and evenin smells/ i want an arrangement for me/ i know/ when i´m here i´ll bring my Japanese mats and we can

sleep on the floor (14-15) but her reaction is not a typical women´s reaction. She seems to be interesting for that to Sean. Michael is one of the women who has a dignity, is courageous and proud of her roots.

Claire is a model who is cocaine-addicted, she´s bisexual. She is Earl´s girlfriend, although they do not have the relationship she could be dreaming about: then tell me why you never loved me like i wanted (Claire 16) because i respect myself/ that´s why (Earl 16)

Nevada is Sean´s supporter as to financial issues. She is in love with him and does not understand why Sean does not love her and does not see in her all the things that in other women he does. “you don’t love me. you never loved me. me/ nevada/ is nothing to you but a few bucks & a easy fuck/ niggah you never took my picture/ you never take my picture/ you don’t think i´m beautiful or nothing, just these slut artist bitches/ beautiful women of color/ with good form. an artist/ an ass. that´s what i´ve been messing with/ i could have had anybody i wanted/ i am not an ordinary nothing/ my family waz manumitted in 1843/ yall were still slaves/ carrying things for white folks” (Nevada 22-23)

Nevada tries to help Sean, she buys lens for him, tries to find the greatest photographer to help Sean, to find an opportunity to exhibit his photos. She is focused on him too much. “no. i don’t need nothing else. i gotta office/ i gotta porche/ i gotta family & a name/ & i never had nothing for myself . . . just this stupidness/ runnin around bein important bein high-falutin/ all this time pushin for what isn’t ever gonna be mine/ i do i do/ need somebody” (Nevada 33)

While Sean is living on Nevada´s expenses, he does not want her to be a part of his life. Earl criticizes Sean for that : what are you talkin abt no place in yr life/ how do you think you´ve been livin/ on yr checks from esquire/ or claire´s pussy? (Earl 37)

4.5.3 Analysis of the main ideas as to human rights 1) a woman is still someone less equal: this is Michael. she´s an incredible dancer/ why pretty soon/ she´ll be as good a dancer as i am a photographer (Sean 6) or so you can get off listenin to him tell you to take yr hincty black ass home/ cuz you may not have anything you want/ but you got everything sean ever dreamed of/ & he cant stand it (Earl 33)

2) that´s a man who command: no. we´re not. i have to go myself/ but you won´t have to be bothered/ you wdnt have any fun (Sean 7) 3) a man can do whatever he can: there are a number of women in my life/ who i plan to keep in my life/ & i´ll never let any of them come between us/ between what we have in our world/ you hear … (Sean 8)

4) a woman has to support her man: that´s right/ we are struggling artists together/ right sean? we´re gonna be together forever & ever/ and ever (Michael 7) or i´m tellin you Michael/ stick with me/ i´m a genius for unravelling the mysteries of the darker races (Sean 21)

5) There is a reflection about the price paid for being famous: alexander dumas sent his son away from him hurried to be famous/ his son waited til the moment way right (Sean 9)

6) jobs which could a niggah do: gotta be a physician/ did abortions for girls about my age when i waz in high school. i know he owned bars & up from transient hotels…(Michael 10) 7) prejudices against black Americans: she smelled an acrid stench the stench of a niggah (Claire 16)

8) men´s weakness as to other woman´s seduction could be also tolerate: i gotta treasure up in there/ a magic magnolia (Claire 12) – the magic magnolia represents a vagina.

9) men´s animality: i really like the way you look/ sleepin like that/ yr face in the morning/ is a blessin/ some women/ i look at them/ i wanna get up . . . but you/ i wanna go back to the womb with you (Michael 14)

10) struggling with stereotypes in the sense that women are jealous and possessive: well/ i´ll be damned. what kinda woman are ya/ don’t you wanna know/ why i need somebody else sides you/ & where am i goin & who is that/ how much do i love you & all that stuff? . . . don’t be getting all holy & above possession/ aint a bitch in the world cant get jealous & loud/ they been runnin me crazy (Sean 15)

11) falling down the stereotype that women cannot be independent and work for living: oh\i´m not gonna be that way/ you´ll see. i work hard as you to make my art take up the slack for my life (Michael 15)

12) plus encouraging women that they value and should appreciate more themselves: i´m just too good feelin for such a simple lil thing i´m just too good feelin for such a simple lil thing (Claire 20)

13) falling down the stereotype that women cannot behave in an intelligent way to get what they want, the example is the scene with Michael who used the situation when Claire visited Sean. She knew that Sean was at home and she created the situation in which she was giving a massage to Claire and in that way she caused that Sean had been jealous. (18-19)

14) falling down the stereotype that black Americans cannot do some types of jobs: i realize yr not accustomed to the visions of a man of color who has a gift/ but fear not (Sean 34) or no no/ i want Nevada to understand that i understand that sean´s a niggah/ & that´s why he´s never gonna be great or whatever you call it/ cuz he´s a niggah &niggahs cant be nothing (Claire 43)

15) criticizing muslims how they behave to their women: besides they are vicious? they wda loved to hit a livin woman/ sean/ don’t you see/ they were wishin that mannequin way a real body to break. (Michael 21)

16) celebration of the roots: a) “this must be that old dude/ looked sorta like my grandpa . . . his hands were like Mississippi fields/ his hands were cotton & blood/ & strong/ that muthafuckah waz strong/ musta been a helluva ladies man/ wearin the dirtiest cashmere coat i ever saw/ but his hands/ i got those . . . damn.” (Sean 23) b) “it´s our lives/ our grandparents & their uncles/ it´s how we came to be/ by taking our lives seriously/ we fight for every breath every goddamn day/ do you know . . . i´m tellin you the truth. i´m tellin you my grandma carried a shotgun & sat on her porch. tellin us abt garvey/ du bois/ the colored horse soldiers & jack Johnson . . . it´s ours. alla ours. don’t nobody own history/ cant nobody make ours but us”(Michael 25) c) “but now i´m holding the nobel prize cuz i . . . i cd see niggahs livin in the dark/ & my acceptance of this prize means/ we are alive/ anybody cd see us now . . . we´re here on the earth/ human beings . . . “(Sean (35)

17) celebration of the black race, the character of the people: my people took care of themselves (Michael 25)

18) celebration of the womanhood: they knew the silver snake kept woman whose kiss wd make hunger disappear &wounds heal (Michael 34)

19) description of the difficulties in a black community: my daddy hadda monkey/ do you hear/ a monkey he treated better than me (Sean 25) or look down on fillmore at the junkies &little girls sellin pussy/ the pawn shops & bars/ specializin in knife fights &chittlins (Sean 25)

20) a philosophical thinking: it´s love. it´s fightin to give something/it´s givin yrself to someone/ who loves you (Michael 29)

4.6 Boogie Woogie Landscapes Boogie Woogie Landscapes is a play where there is one main character whose name is Layla which in Arabic means ´born at night´. Layla is an Afro-American woman in her twenties up to thirties who turns back times when she has been 14 years old. There are other six night-life companions (n.l.c.) who represent dream memories. The night-life companions 1, 2 and 3 are women and the night-life companions 4, 5, 6 are man, moreover n.l.c. #4 is Layla´s lover. Except of these characters a trio of musicians reflects Layla´s consciousness and perceptions of herself and her past.

The play is performed in Layla´s bedroom. In the bedroom there are some mirrors which permit the night-life companions to enter and leave the place through them.

The content of the play is impossible to be given because the play is determined as an exposure of Layla´s dreams, visions, memories, fears and fantasies. Neal A. Lester states in his study that “Shange presents a choreopoem that is more complicated structurally, more theatrically complex, less idealistic philosophically, less naturalistic performatively, and more “entertaining theatrically” than other her dramas.” (Lester 175)

The play focuses on a black woman´s identity problems because the black women grow up in sexist and racist America. The black women have to face struggles with their racial identity and then they have to struggle with gender issues. (Lester 179)

This choreopoem is divided into three units according to the main topic. In the first unit Layla discovers that she is black and she accepts her blackness. In the second unit Layla deals with social and political injustice that is caused by the fact that she is a woman. In the third unit Layla recollects all the moments when neither gender nor race was important.

4.6.1 Layla and male and female night-life companions The play starts with a celebration of the womanhood: dontcha wanna be music/ dontcha wanna be daybreak & ease into fog/ a cosmic event like sound/ &rain yah/ like rain/ like when a woman can walk down gold street feeling like she´s moved to atlantis.

Layla returns from a disco. She lives in her black and white world. She is deeper grey than the shutters of her house. Layla sees herself as grey because she is black-skinned but lives in the world with the domination of the White. She knows exactly how she feels, what she likes, what she wishes for: she didnt want anything as black as the palms of her hands to touch her. (Three pieces, 115) At the age of 14, Layla discovers and accepts her blackness: she waz black enuf awready. (Three pieces 115) 14-year-old Layla starts to accept herself: she studied the legs & arms of herself/ the hair &lips of herself/ before the burst of spirit let her hold herself. (Three pieces 118)

Layla realizes that only God can help her overcome all the difficulties, for example to help her communicate with her mother who is rather cold: jesus had released her to the warmth of herself. the mother waz cold/ & thought the rush of color from her daughter´s mouth/ too blazing & niggardly for her household. (Three pieces 117) The word niggardly is used derogatorily probably because of the personal problems to accept the black identity.

Layla herself is unsatisfied with her identity: she tries to stumble on something to stop this charcoal life/ she goes from room to room like a tractor in the grapes of wrath/ but everything she touches gets blacker & more nondescript “ that´s it”/ she says. (Three pieces 115)

Finally she can accept herself, after discovering the religion and with help of Jesus: now she cd touch her face with the palms of her hands she usedta sit on/ those black hands now caressed her with forsythia delicacy her soul waz filled with daffodils/ tulips spread in her cheeks. (Three pieces 117).

Moreover, she feels superior to the others who do not discover the God: she had withdrawn from the hugs of her mother her father her grandmother & those other lil blk things who lived with her/ the sisters & brothers who had found colours/ 46

who still left huge slurs of gray all around/ she held herself in her light/ feeling sorry for the rest. (Three pieces 118)

This choreopoem shows us Layla´s poor social conditions in which Layla has to live. Layla´s home misses a comfort, Layla describes her home in the words: inside the cave. (Three pieces 115). Not only the place but also her relationship with her mother makes Layla feel uncomfortable in the sense that Layla does not want to become like her mother who is oppressed of being the victim of the others: my mother´s smoke/ scars my arms. (Three pieces 115)

In Layla´s actions it is seen a social inequality, deficiency in nourishment: “she ate newspapers/ the black & white pages/ thinking news of the outside world wd soothe her hunger. . .cuz the outside world waz black & white & thin like where she lived. . .but as she tore the pages/ HELP WANTED first/ then REAL ESTATE/ stuffing them in her mouth/stuffing them in her mouth/ she never thought people places or ideas were anything but black & white/ no one printed books in colors/ plus she waznt sure what colors were/ till she discovered jesus.” (Three pieces 116)

The undernourishment is symbolic. The action of eating the newspaper represents the will to understand the world. Firstly, Layla needs to understand her and that´s why she asks for HELP WANTED. With the heading REAL ESTATE Layla means to find her identity.

In addition, these two sections of the newspaper represent the two areas in which blacks and women have traditionally suffered most discrimination socially and economically in racist North America – employment and unfair housing. (Lester 185)

In a few lines Ntozake Shange is able to describe the intolerance of the white versus the black: the lil black things/ pulled to her & whimpered lil black whys/ “Why did those white men make red of our house/ why did those white men want to blacken even the white doors of our house/ why make fire of our trees/ & our legs/ why make fire/ why laugh at us/ say go home/ aren’t we home/aren’t we home?”

…but even she didn’t know why the thin scrawny white men in a truck laughin had made a fire/ to char these black limbs til they fell abt the fields/ like dry old leaves. (Three pieces 118-119)

The section of Layla´s awareness of her feminineness is accompanied by a speech of n.l.c. #4 who seduces her. The n.l.c. #4 uses an insincere tactics for having a sex with Layla. In this part Ntozake Shange warn women to be cautious and not to succumb to men so easily. The partnership should be equal. Layla recognizes the manipulation and sweet words: you drink continually from a scarlet wine glass & let yr brazziere straps slip/ round/ yr shoulders yr hair is acorns/ yr hair is like a bundle of dreads round up on themselves/ you sit on glass & look at us with eyes as unfamiliar as your simplicity…you are not afraid of the dark/ the wine simply eases the flowers from yr cheeks to my dreams/ the red goblet signals my white stallions to trot. (Three pieces 121)

Ntozake Shange´s main message for women and especially black women is to guard closely their sexuality and try not to be only objects for men. In Shange´s opinion “sexuality inevitably makes each woman vulnerable to the potential physical, social, and gender liabilities.” (Lester 195) Shange pronounces a strong wish oriented against men: leave us lil boxes no man can enter for fear of electrocution/ bar us from the streets/ at threat of life imprisonment: alternative number 1: all the men are locked in boxes with no windows & no doors/ we can come & go as we please/ at any hour/ any day. (Three pieces 123) Shange puts the safety of women on the first place. She struggles for the world without a rape: rape is treason…women shd go everywhere in 2´s after dark…self-defense classes are offered free by the state during working hours to all women…to all unemployed women/ self-defense classes are mandatory for our children/ from age 3/ to prevent rape. (Three pieces 123)

The author puts the security on the highest level of the human rights. Not only the security of women but also the security of the family as a complex: what to say when some one called. i always usedta hout “ mama, it´s somebody colored,” or, “daddy, it´s a white man”. (Three pieces 133) There is a distinction in the way of guests according their skin colour. The White are supposed to be more dangerous so that´s why a man protection is needed in the black family.

In this choreopoem there are described the social problems of black families: the house got crazy. mama tryin to feed nine people & make lunches for five/ put each one of us at a different bus stop. cuz a integration/ none of us went to the neighbourhood school/ my own school was 15 miles away. (Three pieces 131)

Shange offers a picture of a family, where mum is making up her mind if to come back to her family and children: it waz sposed to be a secret bout mama not bein sure whether she wanted to live wid us/ but i knew. & cuz i didnt want the others to worry & cuz they were becoming bothersome/ i didnt say nothin bout it. (Three pieces 132) So it is an evidence of not favouring the women only. Shange really speaks up about all troubles that a Black-American family could go through.

The most moving part in this choreopoem is the part that ruminates on the topic regarding being born as a girl. I will cite some parts of it: it´s not so good to be born a girl/ sometimes. that´s why societies usedta throw us away/ or sell us/ or play with our vaginas/ cuz that´s all girls were good for. at least women cd carry things & cook/ but to be born a girl is not good sometimes/ some places/ such abominable things cd happen to us. (Three pieces 135)

Shange points out that in some countries the infibulation is still practised and lobs against it as you can read in the following lines: then i wd know for sure that no one wd be infibulated that´s a word no one wants us to know. infibulation is sewing our vaginas up with cat-gut or weeds or nylon thread to insure our virginity. virginity insurance equals infibulation. (Three pieces 135)

The author goes into the detailed description of chains of interventions: “if we´ve been excised. had our labia removed with glass or scissors. if we´ve lost our clitoris because our pleasure is profane & the presence of our naturally evolved clitoris wd disrupt the very unnatural dynamic of polygamy. so with no clitoris/ no labia & infibulation/ we´re sewn-up/ cut-up/ pared down & sore if not dead/ & oozing pus/ if not terrified that so much of our body waz wrong & did not belong on earth.” (Three pieces 135)

Shange´s words are strong enough to make the reader feel the pain of these women. Moreover, she cannot see the sense in it and if a girl is born with all the genitals, why should they be removed away? In this part the author describes the superiority of men and her wish to let women decide what should be done with their bodies.

In Shange´s opinion, women should be protected and instead of this, they are permanently worried about their lives: to be born a girl who will always have to worry not only abt the molesters/ the attackers & the rapists/ but also abt their peculiarities: does he stab too/ or shoot? does he carry an axe? does he spit on you? does he know if he doesnt drop a sperm we cant prove we´ve been violated? (Three pieces 135-136) Shange struggles verbally against men who attack women. She warns that some aggressors occur in the family and feels sorry for girls who have to overcome such obstacles. rapists & attackers & molesters are not strangers to everyone/ they are related to somebody/ & some of them like raping & molesting their family members better than a girl-child they don´t know yet. this is called incest, & girl children are discouraged from revealing attacks from uncle or daddy/ cuz what wd mommy do? (Three pieces 136)

Shange calls for the world, where being a girl does not mean to be feared of the brutal actions: infibulation, excision, clitorectomies, rape & incest are irrevocable life-deniers/ life stranglers & disrespectful of natural elements. i wish these things wdnt happen anywhere anymore/ then i cd say it waz gd to be born a girl everywhere…right now being born a girl is to be born threatened. (Three pieces 136)

The playwright in this part of the choreopoem expresses the right of every girl to grow up into a woman and to be proud of her gender and not feel inferior. we owe no one anything/ not our labia, not our clitoris, not our lives. we are born girls to live to be women who live our own lives/ to live our lives. to have/ our lives/ to live. we are born girls/ to live to be women. . . (Three pieces 136)

4.7 From Okra to Greens This play is written as a piece of poetry. It is more important to follow the strength of the words, melody of the lines that the content of the play which in fact is compiled together from Okra´s or Greens´s fragments. The poems give us to feel the heat, noise, they are full of pictures that we can imagine. The whole name of the play is From Okra to Greens/ A Different Kinda Love Story: A Play/ With Music & Dance (1985). As Lester writes in his study, the play presents “as a collection of independent poems that fulfil the role of a medium of creative and political expression. The poems are divided into two voices – a black female and a black male.” (223-224)

In this play there are seven characters, five of them are dressed in the garb of slaves in the New World (Brazil, Martinique, Haiti, Mexico, North America) and the other two are the most important – Greens who is a man, street-wise, English-speaking Afro-American, cynical and Okra who is a crooked woman, full of emotions, physically suffering, she is into Greens who offers her everything she needs: you walked across the sky/ to give me a safe harbour (Okra 17) “The crookedness represents a metaphor of a black woman´s social, psychological and emotional suffering in a race and gender oppressed society.” (Lester 227)

Okra and Greens lead dialogues on a rota basis. The dialogues are commentaries on the realities of oppression, the need for women´s sexual liberation, dealing with the problems via female perspective and introduction to female sensibilities, descriptions of the situation of poor women and children and social and political minorities living under the influence of racism.

According to Lester the “problem of the play lies in its coherence . . . the ordering of the poems seems to break thematic and dramatic continuity. Intensely political poems may seem arbitrarily placed in the love story.” (224)

The play begins with a description of a crooked woman who locked herself in a closet where she met a man. Okra begins to talk to him. They seduce each other, sometimes it seems to be a struggle, sometimes to be a passion.

I will show you the example of the struggle using a short extract: Greens. we kiss Okra. we wrestle

This is the example of the passion: Okra. you set me up to fall int yr dreams Greens. like the sub-saharan animal i am/ in all this heat wanting to be still Okra. to be still with you Greens. in the shadows

Okra and Greens take in turns their speeches. They come with a topic to discuss or think about. It is rather Okra´s lament to the men behaviour versus women and Greens´s complaints about women´s thinking. Not only speeches about relationship between a man and a woman create the sequence of their dialogues, they come back to old times, when the Black community lived in peace and harmony: “it hasnt always been this way/ ellington was not a street/ Robeson no mere emory/ du bois walked up my father´s stairs/ hummed some tune over me/ sleeping in the company of men/ who changed the world . . . our house was filled with all kinda folks/ our windows were not cement or steel/ doors opened like our daddy´s arms.” (Greens 38)

At the end of the play Greens argues against Okra´s feelings, if he hurt her, he aims to tie together again: if you were to hold me tonight/ everywhere we´ve been wd lay on me so/ i might only kiss you/ like the night all we did waz kiss/ all nite long/ but see/ i really wanna make love tonight/ how we live our lives/ so we do all of it. (Greens 47)

Both Okra and Greens discover that at times of guerrilla they stand by each other. Okra informs Greens of her pregnancy and they express their demands in the last poem, that the Black people should be strong and united: Okra i have a daughter/ Mozambique Greens i have a son/ angol Okra our twins Greens salvador & johannesbourg/ cannot speak the same language but we fight the same old men/ in the new world. (Okra and Greens 52-53)

Similarly it is compared Capetown to Palestine, Charleston to Savannah, in Haiti, La Havana to Nirobi, Santiago to Brixton.

Okra´s pregnancy is her expression of her love for Greens. “Shange affords this pregnancy a literary context and equates Okra´d giving of a child to her giving of a poem, “a feminist poem” to Greens. Using gynaecological terminology to describe the child´s birth, Shange proclaims herself an artist continually pregnant with feminist gospel.” (Lester 260) “our [women´s] language is tactile colored & wet our tongues speak these words we dance these words sing em like we mean it/ ...... our visions are our own our truth no less violent than necessary to make our daughters´dreams as real as mensis” (Okra 50-51)

4.7.1 Analysis of the main ideas as to human rights Okra is a courageous woman who is not feared of telling the truth. She speaks with temerity. She confirms her opinion about white people, her almost aversion: i haveta turn my television down sometimes cuz i cant stand to have white people / shout at me/ sometimes i turn it off cuz i cant look at em in my bedroom either/ bein so white (Okra 12-13) In this extract we could see inverted racism. She blames the white for bad habits: i gotta turn the TV off cuz the white people keep playing games/ & folowin presidents on vacation at the war (Okra 13)

Shange´s opinion about complexions of black people is covered in the lines: do you think artra skin tone cream will solve colored complexion problems during a limited nuclear engagement/ or are you stocking up on porcelana? (Greens 40) The each extract introduces a different idea.

In this play Shange puts the emphasis on the roots: wit greens i cd recollect yes the very root of myself (Okra 13); she looks into the history when the conditions for living were not so comfortable: where the children eat off the plates of tourists/ anything (Greens 14), in land houses in cucaçao the safest place for slave owners (Greens 15), history too grimy (Okra 16), memories not fit for sleep (Greens 16), Okra asks about the situation in Jamaica: the children are begging (Okra 29)

Okra feels sorry for men that they do not know what the manliness is, what language they are supposed to speak or what to dress. some/ men dont know anything abt that. the manliness inherent at birth is lost as they grow or shrink to size some/ men dont know that a well dressed man is a female impersonator

. . . some/ men have no language that doesnt hurt (Okra 18) Okra mocks to men, how swollen-headed they are, that they misuse women only: though he was a little man/ he liked to think himself large . . . like the women who decorated his bed from time to time (Okra 18)

Shange, speaking through Okra´s mouth, expressed her feeling about men superficiality and simplicity: suck my dick & make some coffee/ squealed (Okra 20), you should give [energy] to me/ i´m a man (Greens 21), there was nothing [a man] could see in a woman. . . she was forever silly (Okra 22) Shange “with bravura diminished the man´s self-grandeur using the word ´squealed´.” (Lester 236)

Shange pronounced aloud all the phrases men say to their partners: what´s wrong with your hair? dont you oil your legs? why dont you let your pussy hair grow so long/ cut it off, get your teeth fixed/ sit over there & take your ants off. (Okra 22) Men permanently humiliate women and make them to make decisions that women are not convinced to take: his eyes sparkled when he told her what she really needed to do was have a baby/ she needed something to tie her down. (Greens 22), when without warning he shot all his semen up her ass . . . I had to put it somewhere. it was too good to be some pussy. (Greens 25) The sensuality and beauty of lovemaking for both partners contrasts with the unnatural abruptness of this male´s decision to release his semen anally rather than vaginally. (Lester 245)

Men are lower human beings, they are even jealous of own children: he doesnt like that. he said. there´s no one taking care of me. he thought her stitches shd heal faster . . . do you remember before that damned baby? it was me. (Okra 23)

Shange tries to make men think about all the things that could hurt their women. She speaks without fear: some men would rather see us dead than imagine/ what we think of them/ if we measure our silence by our pain/ how could all the words/ any word/ ever catch up/ what is it we cd call equal (Okra (25)

In From Okra to Greens the topic of race is hugely examined: “cuz she´s black & poor she´s disappeared her name is lost games weren´t played nobody tucks her in / wipes traces of cornbread &syrup from her lips cuz she´s black &poor / she´s not.” (Greens 33)

“yet when yr black &poor/ who knows what cd happen to you we don’t seem to be here no way how cd we disappear if we aint even here who cd hear us screamin?” (Greens 34-35)

Shange describes the injustice in North America in the sense that being black and poor can signify being a potential victim and very often investigators close the case without resolving it. Lester provides that “Shange opines that black children vanishing and then turning up dead is more tragic than cross-burnings or lynchings by the Ku Klux Klan; at least Klan activity left signs and implied motives.” (252)

There is another thought that is to consider: the right of children to have a happy childhood: children cant play war (Okra 35), or black women do not have to have questions, when their children are murdered: cuz somebody heard their screams & went on ahead crushing the lil bones / strangling them lil frail wails (Greens (36), there is something caught in my throat/ it is this place/ my baby is sleeping/ i check t see if she is alive/ she does not know about gagging (Okra 39) For black people it is necessary to create a place where their children could be safe: I told this man my daughter didnt know where she was/ where i keep my child/ there are no white men with sexual thoughts about infants/ she´ll know better next time cuz she aint having this place (Okra 40). Shange acts against children molestation.

5 Summary of the main topics concerning human rights This chapter will sum up all the ideas that I put into the groups according to the topics. The choreopoems of Ntozake Shange deal in general with fighting for the identity of the black community and accepting the race. Shange encourages the black to be proud of who they are and not to feel less capable than the white. Thereby, Shange fulfilled one of the human rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. In connection with this, Shange emphasizes the cultural richness of the black and that they have a lot of examples of skilful writers, sportsmen, actors, singers.

Through the whole pieces of work of Ntozake Shange emanates the idea that everyone is entitled to the rights and freedom without distinction of race and colour. The playwright focuses on the black audience especially. Only from time to time she uses a comparison with the white race because she needs to underline the insufficiency in the rights of black or she compares the behaviour of the races and efforts to educate the black to behave properly that the rest of the race could be proud of them. Shange cannot stand molesters and rapist in the proper black family and any kind of inappropriate behaviour among the family members.

The author´s interest is filled in women´s rights. She lobs for equality between men and women. The women should be proud of being born as women, they should be strong and united and try to fight for their better life conditions. They should not be worried to say their opinions and make themselves respect. She struggles for changing some stereotypes about a position of a woman in a family and in a society. The women should not be only sexual objects for men. The women should remove outdated traditions and establish conditions for being taken as a independently thinking human beings who have their needs and wishes, who are allowed to feel free say no to the treatments that they see that are against their nature.

Ntozake Shange mobilizes the society to take care about women, to protect them and to create the environment where the women could feel secure. She feels sorry that in some countries being a woman means being still inferior. There is no way to regret being born a woman, on the contrary, she celebrates women as future mothers

and she creates a complex of sheroes who are capable of everything, who after suffering a lot, or overcoming difficulties deserve our admiration.

Ntozake Shange is an activist who battles against surgical intervetions on women´s genitals. Every woman should have the right to decide what to do with her body.

Shange´s wish is that everybody is allowed to apply the right of life, liberty and security. It would be perfect if a group of black people felt free to move without having a fear. Again, she focuses on the women´s security – to walk free at night, not to be a victim of a sexual crime.

The author defends the rights of children for carefree childhood and for the protection of the child in the own family and society. Especially, she tries to make the black community to think about the conditions of the girls in families and change the intolerable conditions in families for them.

Mostly, the choreopoems presents the celebration of women but surely not in the sense that women are better, in the sense to show what difficulties there are for women and girls in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Shange acted against slavery or servitude, or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments. She calls for the equal opportunities among the races and also for the equal gender roles.

In Shange´s point of view, no one should be persecuted as to his social situation and everybody should be given the equal chance as to education. The black should not be humiliates because they are supposed to be less intelligent by some white. Such a thing does not exist and the black can be as capable as the white. Shange encourages the black artists to aim their goals and fulfil their dreams as actors, photographers or singers. The black artists can offer their contribution to the whole society and enrich it.

6 Conlusion

This bachelor thesis deals with the analysis of the main ideas and opinions of the characters in the choreopoems of the American poet and playwright Ntozake Shange. Since the plays are oriented mainly on black community problems, the understanding of some issues for me as a white reader was sometimes very demanding and requiring the whole range of skills: reading comprehension, puzzling over the information hidden in the text, searching for the meaning of words that are written in different spelling, studying the historical backgrounds of black community, looking for the names of singers, actors, jazz players that are mentioned in the text, including translation of the choreopoems. Nevertheless, the text required the high rate of my concentration and some parts of the text were challenging for the translation and understanding properly, I am convinced that I picked up the main ideas that Ntozake Shange tried to present in her plays on stage. My occasional incomprehension was caused by Shange´s usage of the metaphors or colloquial language. I think it is a challenge for a white reader to go through the text without any further preparation.

Furthermore, I made a research about the life and personality of the playwright. I wanted to understand Ntozake Shange a bit more and identify her aims while writing her books. I consider the author as an intelligent woman who is not blind to injusties of her race and gender and whose aim is to make the black people´s behaviour among themselves even better and more sensitive. She supports the healthy relationships between a man and a woman and among the people. I appreciate her as the defender of human rights.

The thesis itself is divided into several parts. The first chapter introduces the thesis; the second chapter is dedicated to Ntozake Shange´s life and beliefs. I presented Ntozake as the author of a specific form of plays, I was interested in the personality of the playwright and I listed the most significant events in Ntozake Shange´s life. The third chapter is oriented on the features of her choreopoems, I stated the definition of the choreopoem and named all the demands on readers. I completed the chapter also with short extracts. The fourth chapter was the most important and devoted to individual choreopoems that I analysed. I started my analyses with the most known choreopoem

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide. This choreopoem is the celebration of alliance of women who have to go through the life obstacles. The next choreopoem called Spell #7 is devoted to the racism and Shange I tried to find all the stereotypes that were concerned versus the black community. In my opinion, this play has to be listed as the first of the importance. Ntozake Shange made an appeal to the black people think about their actions and to improve their actions that the rest of the community could not feel a shame.

In the fourth chapter I added two books of poetry read on the stage The Love Space Demands and I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes and to be honest, this was a different way of perception of Ntozake Shange´s opinions, because the poems were shorter than the previous choreopoems and the message of the text was hidden in metaphors. I examined all the individual poems. The poems covered many topics.

In the choreopoem with a plot A Photograph: Lovers in Motion I uncovered the topic of a professional employment of the black artists together with the wish for an equal partnership between a man and a woman. The play is the easiest to understand, in my opinion. The celebration of the successful transformation from a girl to a woman is seen in Boogie Woogie Landscapes. The choreopoem deals with the topic of a girl´s acceptance of being a part of a black community, having a black skin. I found in the choreopoem all the opinions that covered the struggles for accepting racial identity and gender identity of a girl and lately a woman. Ntozake Shange opened in this play a social discrimination of women and she described their psychological and emotional frustration of being a woman in today´s society. The topic of poor situation of women and children and political minorities was described in From Okra to Green/ A Different Kinda Love Story: A Play/ With Music & Dance. Ntozake Shange emphasised the importance of the roots and traditions.

In the fifth chapter I summarized main human rights that Ntozake Shange tried to defend in her choreopoems.

The work on my thesis deepened my theoretical knowledge about Ntozake Shange and I learned to understand how the race background could influence the personality also involuntarily which should not be. It should make no difference whether we are born

like a black or a white. All human being should have the same starting line for their future. I realised that I will take as a white woman a lot of things for granted, that there are places where black women are not satisfied with their lives.

Reading the choreopoems by Ntozake Shange was something new to me that helped me to understand more the black, to get to the heart of the problems in the black community, to form me and become a better person and a teacher who in my future teaching would always remember to give all the students the same opportunities and chances, and do not divide the students in the classes on boys and girls but manage to teach them to cooperate and help each other even more.

However, the books of Ntozake Shange are not intended to be read by the white, I could recommend that the books could be promoted more also in Europe. I hope that this bachelor thesis will help to promote the choreopoems at least a bit in the Czech Republic.

7 Works cited

Printed sources

Bryer, Jackson R. The Playwright´s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American

Dramatists. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995. Print.

Herman, William. Understanding. Contemporary American Drama. Columbia:

University of South Carolina, 1987. Print

Kolin, Philip C. and col. Speaking on Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American

Playwrights. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1996. Print.

Lester, Neal A. Ntozake Shange: A Critical Study of the Plays. New York: Garland,

1995. Print.

Roudané, Matthew C. American Drama since 1960: A Critical History. New York:

Twayne Publishers, 1996. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow

is Enuf. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. Plays 1: For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The

Rainbow Is Enuf/Spell#7/The Love Space Demands. Great Britain: Methuen

Drama, 1992. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. A Photograph: Lovers in Motion. New York: Samuel French, 1981.

Print.

Shange, Ntozake. Three pieces. New York: St. Martin´s Press, 1992. Print.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The Bill of Rights

Internet sources

Buckley, Tom. “The Three Stages of Ntozake Shange.” The New York Times. NYTimes, 16 Dec. 1977. Web. 9 September 2017.

Leland, John. “A Poet with Words Trapped Inside.” The New York Times (2013). http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/nyregion/a-poet-with-words-trapped- inside.html?pagewanted=all. Accessed 15 Nov. 2017.

Nicosia, Gerald. “Ntozake Shange, author of “for colored girls,” returns with powerful new poems.” The Washington Post (2018). https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/ntozake-shange-author-of-for- colored-girls-returns-with-powerful-new-poems/2018/01/01/561152e8-eb15-11e7-8a6a- 80acf0774e64_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6773d2ae25ac. Accessed 20 Jan. 2018.

Ntozake Shange. Wolfman Productions. Southbury. PDF file

Poetry Foundation. . “Ntozake Shange.” The Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 2010. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ntozake-shange. Accessed 9 Nov. 2017.

Wakefield, Jamara. “Ntozake Shange on Writing Her Own Words in Her Own Way.” Shondaland (2017). http://www.shondaland.com/live/a13999488/ntozake-shange- interview/ . Accessed 31 Jan. 2018.

Wells, Veronica. “What If Poetry Isn´t Enough? Ntozake Shange Explains How Illness Stifled Her Work.” Madame noire (2013). http://madamenoire.com/317625/ntozake- shange-explains-how-her-illnesses-stifled-her-work/. Accessed 9 Nov. 2017.