Straight to the punch

While watching Beyonce’s music video for “Diva,” I noticed Beyonce performs the same punch dance move that was featured in the choreography that Toni and the Lionesses perform in The Fits. The motion of punching is an offensive attack. It is an action where one strikes their opponent. However, in both choreographed performances in The…

Together and One

The Fits centers around Toni, a child on the verge of becoming a teenage girl. Throughout the film, it is clear that Toni is different; stoic and awkward, she does not fit in with the dance crew. This is only exaggerated by the arrival of a mysterious ailments that is causing the girls to have…

Lydia’s Loopholes: The Garret, Trapdoor, and Gimlet Holes as Escape Mechanisms

To begin approaching an analysis of the chapter title “The Loophole of Retreat,” I asked a couple friends what their associations with the word “loophole” are. Words like “legal,” “white collar,” “politicians,” “corporations,” and “universities” were prevalent responses, confirming my original perspective of the word having a legal or professional connotation—implying someone in a position…

Week 9 Journal Prompt – Alicia

Consider the portion of Scene 2 in the “Harriet Jacobs” play by Lydia Diamond—from the top of page 12 through Harriet’s paragraph on page 14 ending with “…I live under the feet of the Whites who wish us to believe that we are animals”—in which Harriet’s picturesque portrayal of the cotton field is interspersed and…

Do nothing without intention.

As we were examining the line “I knew what I did, and I did it with the deliberate calculation,” (47) from chapter ten in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, I thought about Solange’s music video for “Almeda.” I was hooked onto the line “Nothing without intention. Do nothing without intention,” said by…