April Showers

I'm embarrassed really. I am such a horrible blogger right now. Yesterday, I sat cross legged on the floor and stared at the month of April. Oh dear Lord is all that came to mind.

I have started a new freelance writing job. I'm super excited about it. I am writing Bible curriculum for Indian children, 9-11 years old, that have a parent or parents in the sex industry. So the question I have to pose for myself before writing a lesson is: What would a 10 year old child who has no hope... want to know? My first lesson is on God and how he sees us even in our pain. I am using the Bible story about the shepard who leaves his 99 sheep to find the 1 lost one. Heck, maybe I'll post a few bits of it here... we could all learn something right?

I am still at Serranos until May. I will be making *gasp* my exit there after almost 8 years of being there. I can't say anymore or I might tear up... it's been one of those long, tiring, emotional days so I better steer clear of this one for now. I am excited for the opportunities ahead and grateful for the ones I have had thus far.

So needless to say, April will be crazy. Two jobs. 18 credit hours of school. A husband. A child. A house that is dirty all the time (I honestly don't remember when I have used anything in my kitchen... I am seriously never home). I am up before the sun rises and out the door and come home in darkness. So excited for May... so so excited for May.

I'm taking Cohen out of childcare for the month of June. We are traveling to California and perhaps a few other places. Little guy HAS to see Disneyland (or mom just really wants to see it). I am planning a trip to Vegas with my girlfriend Kellie and I plan on JUST hanging out this summer. I'm excited for no lingering due dates, assignments or what have you. For at least a few months, it's just me and the fam. I'm so so excited. I have a million books that I want to read (if you have any suggestions let me know... I'm more of an essay/nonfiction person than a novel person...ha). A lot of documentaries I want to watch. And SO MUCH SLEEP I want to have. Grateful I can do that.

Also, Zac has put together quite an impressive resume building homes. He has become QUITE the framer and I am shamelessly proud. They have a fan page called Ace's Restoration or you can send him an email at tamazac@yahoo.com for his portfolio. They have been booking up like crazy. God is so good.

Will spend the rest of the evening reading some Joan (Didion that is) and drink some lemon, honey tea. I am refusing to get sick. My head and throat beg to differ. Been scribbling some ideas for some short stories I want to write this summer, a little prose, we'll see. It's my dream.

Run

Run.

Mad, angry, livid, hunted by a sticky-devil-like

Force. Eating tirelessly at the bones, stringy-like-flesh, burning, effortless, like an ash burning pus into your

         wounds, beg it stop and God please see your

Pain. Seeping furiously at the core, the ruptured-like heart that beats, faster and faster and faster and there is           no breath, there is no beating, there is no fervor.

Empty. Deepening contrived loss of one mountainous man hiding behind his trees, narcissism breeding in the 

         depths,  his beard, his regret, but alas, his words. Burning.

Running. Away from succulence, pretending-like, fullness, suffocating madness in the form of a

Smile. Laughing at you stumbling, leaving an inferno of damnation filled, encased with fear, overwhelmed in   

         heartbroken madness, branches clawing deep into the blue-red veins to

Escape. Seeing dejection personified, ugly manifested, truth revealed, run for your

Life.

Your unborn children

Your newfangled marriage

Run. Mad. Run. Angry. Run. Livid. For

         he can’t stop you.

That's Me

Recently, I have been terribly inspired by poets. I have always had a special interest in African American poets as I feel the emotion, passion yet poignant control in their writing is uncanny. Recently Maya Angelou has captured my undivided attention. Writing mostly as an autobiographical fiction author, Angelou has written many autobiographies and created a new genre for doing so. She sees past the facts and into the motives, the heart, the persona, the lies, the games...all of it. She once said "All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated." So much of life is about survival and keeping our head clear above the water as we gasp for a cool breath for our aching lungs. These are not moments... but perhaps months, years... decades of searching our own heart and motives for the things unseen in our own lives. The depth of something that seems aloof or potentially intrusive. There are times I would rather sink than fight to keep my head above the water. To walk away rather than press in. To walk backwards instead of moving forwards. To let life teach me rather than me arrogantly teach "it." To allow faith to resonate and fear to fade.


Often to rise above these moments I remind myself of who I am and what I am truly capable of. It is taking that "grace" and "faith" and allowing the unknown to surface. What could it be? Will it kill me? Will I know what to do with it? Can I survive this pain and heartache?


I know I am more than just a woman but this woman, on a very lousy, stressful day, needed to be reminded of her woman-ness. As women we should never shy away from loving every inch of who we are. Each one of us has survived something... don't let time erase that from our memories.


Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.


Maya Angelou

Joan Didion: My Muse

Loved this excerpt from "The Year of Magical Thinking"... one of my favorite books.

Enjoy.

Excerpted from "The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion Copyright © 2005 by Joan Didion. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.

* * *

Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity.

Those were the first words I wrote after it happened. The computer dating on the Microsoft Word file ("Notes on change.doc") reads "May 20, 2004, 11:11 p.m.," but that would have been a case of my opening the file and reflexively pressing save when I closed it. I had made no changes to that file in May. I had made no changes to that file since I wrote the words, in January 2004, a day or two or three after the fact. For a long time I wrote nothing else.
Life changes in the instant.

The ordinary instant.
At some point, in the interest of remembering what seemed most striking about what had happened, I considered adding those words, "the ordinary instant." I saw immediately that there would be no need to add the word "ordinary," because there would be no forgetting it: the word never left my mind. It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it.

I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. "He was on his way home from work—happy, successful, healthy—and then, gone," I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an "ordinary Sunday morning" it had been. "It was just an ordinary beautiful September day," people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States."

"And then—gone." In the midst of life we are in death, Episcopalians say at the graveside. Later I realized that I must have repeated the details of what happened to everyone who came to the house in those first weeks, all those friends and relatives who brought food and made drinks and laid out plates on the dining room table for however many people were around at lunch or dinner time, all those who picked up the plates and froze the leftovers and ran the dishwasher and filled our (I could not yet think my) otherwise empty house even after I had gone into the bedroom (our bedroom, the one in which there still lay on a sofa a faded terrycloth XL robe bought in the 1970s at Richard Carroll in Beverly Hills) and shut the door. Those moments when I was abruptly overtaken by exhaustion are what I remember most clearly about the first days and weeks. I have no memory of telling anyone the details, but I must have done so, because everyone seemed to know them. At one point I considered the possibility that they had picked up the details of the story from one another, but immediately rejected it: the story they had was in each instance too accurate to have been passed from hand to hand. It had come from me.
Another reason I knew that the story had come from me was that no version I heard included the details I could not yet face, for example the blood on the living room floor that stayed there until José came in the next morning and cleaned it up.
José. Who was part of our household. Who was supposed to be flying to Las Vegas later that day, December 31, but never went. José was crying that morning as he cleaned up the blood. When I first told him what had happened he had not understood. Clearly I was not the ideal teller of this story, something about my version had been at once too offhand and too elliptical, something in my tone had failed to convey the central fact in the situation (I would encounter the same failure later when I had to tell Quintana), but by the time José saw the blood he understood.

I had picked up the abandoned syringes and ECG electrodes before he came in that morning but I could not face the blood.

In outline.

It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004.

Nine months and five days ago, at approximately nine o'clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. Our only child, Quintana, had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center's Singer Division, at that time a hospital on East End Avenue (it closed in August 2004) more commonly known as "Beth Israel North" or "the old Doctors' Hospital," where what had seemed a case of December flu sufficiently severe to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and septic shock.

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who I am, or have become, yet this is a case in which I wish I had instead of words and their rhythms a cutting room, equipped with an Avid, a digital editing system on which I could touch a key and collapse the sequence of time, show you simultaneously all the frames of memory that come to me now, let you pick the takes, the marginally different expressions, the variant readings of the same lines. This is a case in which I need more than words to find the meaning. This is a case in which I need whatever it is I think or believe to be penetrable, if only for myself.

To Read More...

Quiet Time

 

What I love the most about being in California again is the incredible amount of quiet time I get. Now, I don't just mean the obvious physical noise being muted but rather a simplistic hush that comes over me when I am able to sit in the quiet. We often see quiet time as something we ought to do and for me it is something I long for on a daily basis. The enormous amount of desire that conveys itself in a moment of picking an orange off a tree, filling the thirsty, longing wilted flowers with nourishment, the crash of the ocean as it hisses... beyond me, beyond this place...echoing into eternity. My mind craves those inexplicable moments that bring nature and human into one place... a quiet place.

I have a dream of walking along the ocean and I feel my toes squishing into the sand, it is warm and soft and forms to each contour of my feet as if to say "I see you, I support you"... as I stop myself and turn toward the vast and unwavering ocean, I can only believe in two things.

That this life is bigger than me but I am still a small instrument in the smallest inter-workings of God

And

That there is more to life than always seeing it as "bigger than me."

In my dream I hold my shoes in one hand, novels of great writers in the other and take a stroll with past minds... I reflect on the inconsistencies of life. The great depression and holocaust the world has immersed itself in. I admire the way my hair blows effortlessly in the salty winds as a splash of wave tickles my ankles and reminds me that I am human and therefore can not and should not decipher the world. Who am I to entertain questions about angels and demons and philosophers? Who am I to entertain questions about my God? Who are you God? Do you see me? The waves speak to me.... crying, exacerbating thoughts that make no sense... make no mention of understanding. Hurling their deeply entrenched desire to guide me toward the true light, the true answers... my Arthurian journey. Endless wandering of sand between my feet,  chilled water at my side and violent wind a my back...

This dream is a literal dream but a picture of my life in a reality I desire so often. When I close my eyes, I find myself feet in the ocean, ankle deep in the crisp rejuvenation of life. The reminder that there are endless possibilities as the ocean seems endless on the aching horizon.

I slowly dust the sand off my feet as I trail further away from the ocean I love, the ocean I crave, the endless possibilities of fluidity and motion. I carve my dreams not in sand but in stone... ones that I can remember. My dream will be my reality. My reality is this moment and this moment is quiet.

Deconstruction of a Stereotype

This is my final paper last semester in my African American Literature class. It will make more sense if you have read Ntosake Shange's choreopoem For Colored Girls and Gloria Naylor's novel The Women of Brewster Place. Both of these pieces are excellent reads. I was asked by my proff to submit for potential scholarly review! This kind of literature continually moves me and I enjoy reflecting and writing on it...

Enjoy!

The Strong, Black Woman: Deconstruction of a Stereotype through Violence

What does it mean to be strong, be black and be a woman? When put together as one phrase it becomes a common stereotype: the “strong black woman”. Ngina T. Bagget said it demonstrably in her poem titled “Strong Black Woman.” The final four lines exclaim, “Strong Black Woman/ Affected so many lives/ Being Strong for those who Couldn't/
But in the END Gracefully said Goodbye” (Bagget 2010). In these short line we see the identity of the strong black woman as a self-contained in control matriarch who thrusts through oppression even until death. This idea of black women being resilient and emotion-less is critical in literature especially when the notion of physical, emotional and mental violence is introduced. Though there are many arguments about the myriad of reasons (i.e.: white, capitalistic, patriarchy) for the stereotypical “black man’s violence,” the focus here is of the black woman as a victim of violence in literature and how this speaks to black women as a whole.  The question posed is this: In Ntosake Shange’s choreopoem For Colored Girls and Gloria Naylor’s novel The Women of Brewster Place what are the reactions from the black women who are victims of violence? How do black women survive the oppressive violence demonstrated to them by black men? By deconstructing the stereotype of the “strong black woman” and clinging to other black women for support, the black woman is able to regain her voice and dignity.

            To understand the strong, black woman, it is crucial to identify the binary by which it was born, that being the tension between black men and black women. There is an underlying strain between black men /women that has been current for centuries and yet theorists do not know how to effectively encompass and comprehend the stereotypical binary of “weak black man verses strong black woman.” The repercussions of these stereotypes are what elicit violence that one sees in For Colored Girls and The Women of Brewster Place. To enhance this argument that there is a distinct binary, Dr. Jean Wyatt in his article titled “Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman” states, “When African American women and men internalize the gender ideology of the ‘weak men, strong women,’ there are political effects: The anger that could energize…dividing them from each other and thus preventing the solidarity needed for collective resistance” (Wyatt 55). Similarly to this statement are lines from For Colored girls like “are we ghouls? children of horror? the joke” (Shange 4). Instead of binding together as black men and women the movement is to resist one another and do themselves the disservice of silencing their collective voice. These women are seen simply as “ghouls” without any voice or presence. The silencing has come directly from their stereotype. What then do black women do with this lack of voice? Wyatt explains, “Being a strong, black woman meant that she could not admit vulnerability or imperfection or neediness” (Wyatt 57). Essentially to survive as a black woman in a society where tension between the two sexes is present one must be strong, even if it means she removes herself so far from her emotions.

A black woman must not admit to the imperfections of being human and as Shange puts it in her choreopeom, “we gotta dance to keep from cryin/ we gotta dance to keep from dyin” (Shange 15). Black women must keep dancing to the rhythm of life because black women have succeeded as matriarchs of their family due to many factors. Black women not only work against the violence of black men’s stereotype but also against racism and sexism. The black women constantly remind the readers that ‘We’re still here’ throughout The Women of Brewster Place by Naylor explicating the different character developments.

Unable to establish their her own identity apart from the strong, black woman, Lucielia “Ciel” Louise Turnerstory in The Women of Brewster Place is exposed to severe violence and her identity crisis that comes with the loss of her innocence. It is the coming together of black women that is what ultimately brings healing and rebirth to violence. Ciel is introduced to the readers not through outright descriptive narrative but through her thoughts and internal nature. Her narrative comes from the voice in her head as part of being a strong, black woman is to reject feelings of pain. Her relationship with her husband is detrimental in nature and he can be described as a man who can have a child but not talk care of it (Naylor 91). When Ciel becomes pregnant again with her second child, her husband Eugene asks “How the hell we gonna feed it when it gets here?” (Naylor 95). This tension rises as Eugene takes Ciel to get an abortion and the reaction Ciel gives (internally) is, “It was important that she keep herself completely isolated from these surroundings…Ciel wanted no part of it” (Naylor 95). In this scene Naylor deconstructs Ciel into a dehumanized object and forces the reader to ask: If Ciel is a strong, black woman, why did she just say no?

The deconstruction of the strong, black woman has begun at this point in the narrative and it only spirals with the loss of her daughter through electrocution. The violent death of her fetus to the hands of weak husband and the loss of a child due to a moment of negligence brings Ciel to the brink of sanity, “She was simply tired of hurting” (Naylor 101). Mary O’Connor in her article titled “Subject, Voice, and Women in Some Contemporary Black American Women’s Writing” describes this moment of severe loss more in depth when she states, “Ciel goes dead, she cannot mourn and is killing herself by not eating” (O’Connor 44). At this point there is not a strong, black woman in Ciel. She has given up the will until matriarch Mattie comes to be her savior. Ciel has been silenced by the violence done to her and Mattie has come to bring voice where it had only been internalized before. In a moment of deep desperation Mattie rocks Ciel like a mother would a child, rocking “back into the womb” (Naylor 103). Ciel finally releases the brokenness and allows herself to feel pain which complicates the stereotype. This rocking is done to exorcize the “evilness of pain” and Mattie gives Ciel a bath to “baptize” her back into existence. It took one black woman to bring another black woman to life (Naylor 104). O’Connor said it succinctly by expressing that, “This story calls for a period of mourning, a process of soothing and healing” and the most imperative aspect to the deconstruction of the strong, black woman is the process of healing (O’Connor 47). By allowing Mattie to enter into her vulnerability and figuratively baptize her back into existence, Ciel is able to regain a sense of consciousness. This is shown at the end of the story as Naylor writes that “…she (Ciel) would sleep. And morning would come” (Naylor 105).

As a contrast to Ciel’s expose that Naylor gives is the story of Lorraine that is found in the “Two” section of the novel. Lorraine’s story is the deconstruction of the strong, black woman but in the case of Lorraine she does not have the comfort and rocking of another black woman like Mattie. Lorraine’s rape is an instance of violence with no hope attached. No one saves Lorraine from her pain and even the reader feels trapped in her agony. Not only a strong, black woman, Lorraine is also a lesbian. If being a black woman was not difficult for its societal and social constraints the complexity of sexuality is now added to her individuality. Lorraine is a good woman but she “threated their (neighborhood) children” with her identity as a homosexual (Naylor 142). One could argue that she must now be a stronger, black woman in light of her sexuality. Her identity is a sort of hyper-strong black woman who can cling to her lover Theresa but no one else. Understanding the tension between black individuals, Lorraine states, “Black people were all in the same boat---she’d come to realize this even more since they had moved to Brewster---and if they didn’t row together, they would sink together” (Naylor 142). This foreshadows the horrific rape that Lorraine is forced to be the victim of and her prophetic words of “sinking together” become prevalent. In the moments before the physical rape occurs, Lorraine realizes why the boys are going to violate her and contemplates, “So Lorraine found herself, on her knees, surrounded by the most dangerous species in existence---human males with an erection to validate in a world that was only six feet wide” (Naylor 170). Laura E. Tanner in her article titled “Reading Rape: Sanctuary and The Women of Brewster Place” describes these males as “imposing them on the silent image of woman still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (Tanner 576). The breaking down of the strong, black woman merely into a bearer of meaning forces the reader to see Lorraine as an object and not as a human. Lorraine is sinking to the hands of another stereotype. Pain becomes a character introduced in this moment and lingers as the men “pin her arms, wrench open her legs and tear her pantyhose” (Naylor 170). Violence has deconstructed the strong, black woman into nothing but a tall yellow woman in a bloody green and black dress whose only way of speaking, like Ciel’s moaning, is to say “please” (Naylor 173). Lorraine is reduced to nothingness and does not have a Mattie to bring her to life and ultimately she cannot be rebirthed into a new identity without the help or ‘rocking’ of other black women. Brokenness is all that is left of Lorraine without any hope of reconstructing her identity.

Like The Women of Brewster Place, For Colored Girls is a choreopoem intended to be acted out by each of the characters i.e.: lady in red, blue, brown and etc. Each one of these ladies has a story to tell about loss of innocence, children, lives and ultimately what it means to be a strong, black woman. Shange begins her choreopoem with each of the women coming onto the stage through different exits. This signifying the different stages of life and different experiences each woman has encountered on her individual journey. Each woman dances separately and like O’Connor states, “This separateness continues as some women reject others parodying one dancing, or refusing to dance, but gradually as the stories unfold, as difference and similarity are established, they begin to dance together” (O’Connor 46). The women realize there is power in their language and telling of stories. Their differences define them just as much as their similarities as is described in the dark phases of womanhood by the lady in brown. The lady in brown describes the disheartening view of being a black woman, she describes:

dark phrases of womanhood

of never havin been a girl

half-notes scattered

without rhythm/ no tune

distraught laughter fallin

over a black girl’s shoulder

it’s funny/it’s hysterical

the melody-less-ness of her dance

don’t tell nobody don’t tell a soul

she’s dancing on beer cans & shingles

(Shange 3)

This portion of the text complicates the idea that black women have never been girls. They were born into a world with no rhythm and no tune therefore they cannot dance to the events of life. The dancing comes only to mask the pain that has overtaken each black woman. Their laughter is distraught due to the realization that black woman are subhuman in this context. That their voices have been silenced by their stereotype and Shange’s entire choreopoem is to give each lady a turn to “dance” or to “speak” if you will. This is reinforced when the lady in brown goes on to say “she’s been dead so long/ closed in silence so long/ she doesn’t know the sound/ of her own voice/ her infinite beauty” (Shange 4). Each of these stories gives an opportunity for each lady to speak and perform of the travails and the violence that has been done against her. By giving a strong, black woman a voice the deconstruction has begun.

            The lady in blue describes the violence of having an abortion, like Ciel’s experience of wanting to escape the reality, and ultimately she exclaims that there was “dyin dangling tween my legs” (Shange 22). The lady in the blue has a breakdown in identity as a strong, black woman because she recognizes that people “lookin at me/ pregnant” because that would minimize her power as a strong, black woman (Shange 22). Ultimately, she has the abortion and states that “this hurts/ thus hurts me/ & nobody came” which mirrors the experience Lorraine endured. When there is no one there to uplift the broken, silenced black woman she hurts. Sharing this experienced now draws the lady in purple, yellow and etc. to share their experience with violence and/or broken dreams. Shange is drawing these women together thru narrative. The lady in orange says it precisely when she states, “ever since I realized there was someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch of a nag/ I been tryin not to be that” (Shange 42). The women in this text recognize that to be a black woman is to be a strong, black woman. The stereotype cannot be broken down until the black woman is heard. Shange closes the book with the story of Crystal and Beau as the ultimate breakdown in a woman’s psyche, like that of Ciel’s in The Women of Brewster’s Place.

            The lady in red (Crystal) tells her story of her longtime lover Beau who comes home from the war disturbed and wanting to marry crystal and take care of their two children. Crystal describes Beau as “crazy as hell” and also as a violent man who “beat her to death when she tol him” that she was pregnant (Shange 55, 56). Crystal being the strong, black woman that she is removed her children from the oppressiveness that Beau brought to the family. This strong, black woman is played out when Beau tries to coax the children to come to him and she states “don’t you touch my children/muthafucker/or i’ll kill you,” her words piercing the weak, negligent Beau (Shange 58). When Beau finally coaxes the children into his arms he berates Crystal for not marrying him and continuing to be a “whore” who will not let him see his kids (Shange 59). When the children are in the hands of Beau, Crystal loses her fire as the strong, black woman and Beau shatters her identity as he drops the two children to their death. Crystal “cd only whisper” and ultimately she loses her children just as Ciel lost hers to violence (Shange 60). The ladies in the choreopoem now gather around one another and chant “i found god in myself/ & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely” (Shange 63). Just like Mattie give birth to Ciel’s new identity, the ladies in For Colored Girls gather around one another and find strength in one another. This chant is a song of joy that unites the women as they each recognize the deconstruction of their own stereotype and there is a unity and voice that comes with it.

To survive is to be strong and strong, black women are just that. This mythic strength comes from the idea that black women need to hold it together for themselves and the black community. The strong, black woman like Wyatt explains is used “as a weapon in the power relations between Black men and Black women” (Wyatt 60). This weapon that is held by black women is often turned on themselves bringing their own demise and own sabotage. Embracing this social construct has been the source of great violence between black men and women and ultimately leaves women to rely on other black women for their rebirth of identity. To shut down every emotion has been to survive and letting out in pain like Ciel, Lorraine or Crystal did is to embrace a new identity apart from the mythological construct of the strong, black woman. The reactions of women subjugated to violence are silence. When the silence is recognized by other women, the ability to call the woman out of herself and her stereotype becomes the ultimate healer. The deconstruction of the strong, black woman leads all individuals reading The Women of Brewster Place or For Colored Girls to ask themselves: What social constructs am I as a reader succumb to and how is my voice heard?

Works Cited

Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. New York: Penguin, 1983. Print

O'Connor, Mary. "Subject, Voice, and Women in Some Contemporary Black American

Women's Writing." Contemporary American Women Writers: Gender, Class, Ethnicity (

1998): 32-50. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide, When the Rainbow Is Enuf:

a Choreopoem. New York: Scribner Poetry, 1997. Print.

Tanner, Laura E. "Reading Rape: Sanctuary and The Women of Brewster Place." Duke

University Press 62.4 (1990): 560-82. Print.

Wyatt, Jean. "Patricia Hill Collins's Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black

Woman." Academic Search Premier. EBSCO, 2004. Web. 24 Nov. 2010.

I Believe

I believe that arguments last as long as you let them, even until death.

I believe that trust trumps all other values in marriage, without it, you have nothing.

I believe that the sun is brightest when the snow is whitest.

I believe that faith requires an aptitude of grief attached.

I believe true friendship does not require a daily, weekly or even monthly phone call.

I believe that I did myself the greatest disservice when I quit dance and piano.

I believe regrets are just failures that are etched in the back of our brains.

I believe we say things like “I don’t regret anything” to mask the real pain surrounding our guilt.

I believe that child birth is the worst and best pain I have ever felt.

I believe that it’s ok if a mother has to grow to love her child.

I believe that love is fleeting and a foolish word we throw around.

I believe in the gift of letting go at the right time.

I believe that one’s sexuality is not a choice.

I believe in the power of one voice to change the world they see.

I believe that peace only comes through tolerance, acceptance and the ability to admit when one is wrong.

I believe that America is not the greatest nation on earth.
I believe in single mothers and the wonderful gift they are to the world.
I believe I need to take care of the homeless, love the fatherless and give to the widow...more.

I believe that candles are better light than the harsh florescent lights we have created.

I believe that the emerging church has much more truth than is lead on.

I believe that much of who I am is founded on the neurons that stimulate me and not such much on the environment that surrounds me.

I believe we are all warriors and survive something at least once in our life.

I believe that chrysanthemums are so lovely when they are white, laced with purple.

I believe in the sanctity of life and pray for the breaths that were never taken outside the womb.

I believe in hope for the future.

I believe I create my own hope through my choices.

I believe that there will always be people who want your life…and you will want theres.

I believe that bubble baths cure most aches of the body.

I believe that bubble baths and an old vine zin will cure all aches of the body.

I believe that the choices I make now will ring on forever.

I believe that no one knows you better than yourself, well, maybe your washing machine.

I believe that you should never have sex with someone who you can’t see raising a child with.

I believe you can’t be prolife and pro death penalty.

I believe that my introspection is my deepest despair.

I believe that Jesus keeps saving me, not just once.

I believe that a sunset can smell like a salty ocean if you let it.

I believe that technology, not sex or violence, could destroy this next generation of leaders.

I believe in Karma and paying it forward.

I believe that Americans don’t laugh enough at themselves.

I believe that fifteen minutes of yoga can put me in a better mood.

I believe that an education is imperative and thirst for knowledge is key to keeping up with our world.

I believe ignorance and arrogance to be the most distasteful qualities.

I believe hate can wear high heels and a cross around her neck.

I believe that one’s sexual desires drastically changes from 18 to 23 and that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I believe that God weeps over the way he has been extorted into a money making machine.

I believe that family comes first, even if it takes a lifetime to get there.

I believe that God is steadfast, even in my disobedience.

I believe in myself to do the impossible.