THE SUBJUGATION OF THE VOICELESS IN NTOZAKE SHANGE’S THREE PIECES
1
Author(s):
DR. R. BAKYARAJ
Vol - 10, Issue- 1 ,
Page(s) : 26 - 33
(2019 )
DOI : https://doi.org/10.32804/IRJMSH
Abstract
Colored Girls first gained dishonor in 1974 as an exhilarating enactment by Shange and four of her close friends in a Berkeley, Calif., women’s bar, the Bacchanal. As they progressed and danced, they recited Shange’s poems–about coming of age, suffering, sexual battering, and reclamation. Colored Girls arrived during a cultural renaissance when communities of color—Black, Latino, Asian, Native American–were working in solidarity. Women's rights provided the context. Below is a quote from the remarkable Ntozake Shange. Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of spirits. — Ntozake Shange, Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo
- Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New york: Grove Press,1967). Quoted in Ntozake Shange, Three Pieces xii.
- Marsh-Lockett, CAROL.”a Woman’s Art; A Woman’s Craft: The Self in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo.”Arms Akimbo: Africana Women in Contemporary Literature .Ed. Janice L. Liddell and YakiniB. Kemp. New York: University P of Florida, 1999.
- Martin, Biddy. “Lesbian Identity and Autobiographical Difference(s).” Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. Print.
- McKay, Nellie Y. “The Narrative Self: Race, Politics and Culture in Black American Women’s Autobiography.” Women, Autobiography, Theory: A Reader. Eds. Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson. Wisconsin: U of Wisconsin P, 1998. Print.
- Ntozake Shange, Three Pieces (New york: St. Martin’s Press, 1981) ix.
- Sandra L. Richards “Conflicting impulses in the plays of Shange”, Black American Literature Forum,Vol.17 ( Summar 1983)73.
- Seymour Reiter, World Theater: The Structure and Meaning of Drama ( New york :Dek,1973) 57- 74
|