“‘I am sassafrass/my fingers behold you
I call upon you with my song you teach
Me in my sleep/i am not a besieger of yr
fortress/i am a crusader/for you are
All my past/i offer you my body to
Make manifest yr will in this dungeon
Of machines & carolina blues/i wanna
Sing yr joy/&make present our beauty/
spirits /black & brown/find yr way
Thru my tainyed blood/make me one of
Yr own/i am yr child in the new world/
I am yr fruit/yet ti be chosen for
A single battle in yr behalf/come to
&thry me/i am dazzled by yr beneficence
I shall create new altars/new praises
&be ancient among you/”
(page 91)
Within this prominent, powerful, calling testament to generational: trauma, grief, beauty, culture, learnings, growths, sufferings, practices, love Sassafras’s dazzles us with her call to love and to belonging. The Geechee, Gullah, culture that spreads itself from North Carolina to around the United States as we follow the family outward. They bring their roots, ancestors, spirits within them wherever they go. Leaving home, leaving one another brings pain, new challenges, and belonging. In support of this, Shange only shows us the whole family together at three unique occasions in the book. The rooted, earth manifested history of these four women and their blood, muscles, bones, rooted bodies revolves deeply within each of them despite the distance they may face from each other and from home.
I call upon you with my song you teach
Me in my sleep/i am not a besieger of yr
fortress/i am a crusader/
- Testament, call to change/unlearning against all oppressors
- “I am not a besieger”, “i am a crusader”- Shange’s positive affirmations her calls to the self, to the greater for strength, power, space
- The words fight the fight, the women become the change they seek 🙂
/i wanna
Sing yr joy/&make present our beauty/
spirits /black & brown/find yr way
Thru my tainyed blood/make me one of
Yr own/i am yr child in the new world/
- A call to love, a call to life, to belonging
- Singing beauty into pain and finding strength from shackles
- Rising above, beyond, through the anger: “make present our beauty/spirits/black & brown” -calling forth the strength, power to unlearn, to grow, to become alive !
/find yr way
Thru my tainyed blood/make me one of
Yr own/i am yr child in the new world/
- Finding the way through the past- moving the past through the present to teach, unlearn, grow, to see the broken habits of past oppressors of black women, white women, black men, the homeless, and all oppressed people…. Using the past as a vehicle to belonging in the world, in love, in a new world in which love, unity, peace, togetherness come together, a world in which unlearning occurs and oppressing ends… this is the chant, the goal, the hope.
I am yr fruit
- I am worthy, i belong
- I am the fruit of the world, i am the fruit of love (positive affirmations are everything)
- Being the fruit: being birthed from something greater, from a history, being the product of something greater- of cycles, of life and death, of love
- Religious- christian references, references to jesus, love, God
** very much so affirmations, song type affirmations of belonging, love, unlearning
- A call to action while also being a chant, an act of begging, an act of pleading, an act of love, an attempt at unlearning and a need for learning, teaching, unlearning
yet ti be chosen for
A single battle in yr behalf/come to
&thry me/i am dazzled by yr beneficence
I shall create new altars/new praises
&be ancient among you/”
- “Be ancient among you”, a testament to the ancient gullah culture, history, the roots that planted themselves on these invaded, hostile, forced lands
- The beauty that was birthed from the ugly slave trade, the history, culture that became itself and always was itself.
- The worshipping of thisn love filled culture will never end , it will grow- develop “new altars and new praises” as new challenges arise and people move, grow, etc but the ancestors, the history, the culture of the Gullah will never be forgotten, only brought along and worshipped and channeled, Shange says we must work towards and for this,
- Shange thinks it is vital that we worship, that we praise, that we never forget our roots or ancestors, that we bring them along with us as we journey, experience, learn, suffer, change
“It is at once a novel, an archive of Black Gullah culture, and an exploration of Black women as cultural producers and transmitters.” – quote I found online that speaks to my little exploration