Inspired by Ntozake Shange’s A Daughter’s Geography, “A Daughter’s Cosmography” is a series of nine pairings of poetry and photography that reflect on concepts of self-care, self-love, ritual, healing, daughtership, mothering and “the politics of the personal.” These ideas, which blur the boundary between theory and politics, reflect my interaction with Audre Lorde’s writings and poetry such as “Winds of the Orishas” and Ntozake Shange’s works we read in class, especially for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. In addition to studying their literary texts, I used the Ntozake Shange papers in the archives at Barnard College, the Audre Lorde papers at the archives in Spelman College and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
My photos and poems in “A Daughter’s Cosmography” draw on political, social, and affective forms of knowledge in Lorde and Shange’s works, which meditate on the voluminous concepts within Afro-Spirituality. Analyzing the supposed divide between the sacred and the secular, my work channels the energies and essence of the female orishas — Yemaya, Oshun, and Oya — from Afro-Cuban spiritual tradition. I drew inspiration from my Afro-Cuban dance class at Barnard which helped me adopt much of the physicality and presence which I express in my photos.
In addition to individual research and movement exploration, I composed the photos in collaboration with Barnard student make-up artists and photographers. Using the digital skills I acquired and inspired by our discussions of artistic collaborations at the International Center for Photography, my project invites the viewer to engage in a visual and verbal dialogue with me through poetry and images.
we need a god who bleeds
Photo credit: Anta Touray
A poem inspired by Ntozake Shange’s “we need a god who bleeds”
we need a god who bleeds now
a god of flesh & blood
with the fragility to feel
a paper cut’s sting
//
we need a god who bleeds now
a god who sweats blood from her brow
at the sight of injustice in our courts
at the sound of Earth’s vengeance against the
negligence of our land
at the smell of bodies burning unnoticed in the
streets
//
we need a god who bleeds now
in life’s cycle of ruin & renewal
who spreads her lunar vulva &
showers us in shades of scarlet
who’s battered breasts flow rivers of Life,
bearing new out of old,
love out of pain,
light out of the shadows,
pearls out of ashes & sand
//
like our mothers bleeding
the planet is heaving / mourning our ignorance
the moon tugs the seas
the rivers spill into the oceans
to hold her / to hold her
embrace swelling hills
do not look at me
with pity or eyes full with condolences
i am not wounded // i am bleeding to life
we need a god who bleeds now
whose wounds are not the end of anything
but are the beginning of all Living things
let her be born
Photo credit: Valerie Jaharis
Poem inspired by Ntozake Shange’s “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf”
let the blk gurl prophesy
to dry bones:
come / breath / from the four winds
sing her songs & sighs
to 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
let her be born
& handled warmly
birth
Photo credit: Yemisi Olorunwunmi
Poem inspired by Ntozake Shange’s Spell #7
i
have
given
birth to
a child
called
.
.
.
Myself
oya
Photo credit: Valerie Jaharis
Selected lines from Audre Lorde’s poem “Winds of the Orishas”
i will become
myself an
incantation
warning winds
announce us
living as Oya,
Oya my sister
my daughter
dance is
Photo credit: Anta Touray
Dance is : survival :: life :: death
war / peace / breath
change / fire,
earth, water & wind
Gestures emit
// energies
Contractions //
produce reactions
Bodies are vessels
of ancestors’ spirits
The generations of my own ::
being past / present / future
reside in this
Temple
the consummation of self-love
Photo credit: Yemisi Olorunwunmi
Poem from Ntozake Shange “i found god in myself”
i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely
oshun’s cackle
Photo credit: Valerie Jaharis
dare do // harm
her cackle will
cut // you
embodied knowledge // carnal intellectuality
Photo credit: Anta Touray
:: carnal :: knowledge :: carnal ::
:: embodied :: carnal :: embodied ::
:: knowledge :: intellect :: intellectual ::
:: embodied knowledge :: intellect ::
:: carnal intellectual ::
:: embodied intellectuality :: carnal ::
:: intellect :: carnal knowledge ::
:: carnal intellectuality::
daughters of Shange
Photo credit: Yemisi Olorunwunmi
Daughter dear :: in all Your splendor & glory
You have mothered many Daughters
Your words have watered seeds
neglected in the sunless soil
of little girls’ hearts
Mother Shange ::
You have taught me some truths are unspoken
some knowledge is unwritten :: that the
deepest understanding is in the
marrow of our bones
& thickness of our blood :: that resolution is in
gesture & breath :: renewal comes with
inhaling & closure with exhaling
rather than resisting the tide
i now yield to the moon’s
magnetic pull :: let
my body speak
allow myself to weep :: give permission
the beasts of the seas within me :: to
emerge :: i have emerged &
am emerging as do all
Daughters of Shange
View the original publication http://bcrw.barnard.edu/digitalshange/projects/portfolio/a-daughters-cosmography/.
