Performance pedagogies for African American literature: Teaching Shange at Ole Miss

Radical Teacher, Winter, 2002 by Ethel Young-Minor

I purchased a copy of the text on the way home from the tournament and Shange became my personal guide to growing up Black and female. Since then, I have seen three professional performances of the piece. I have also taught FCG to both high-school and college students.

I understood the cultural relevance of this piece intimately because of how it affected my personal development, but as my studies advanced I was pushed to interrogate how the text spoke, rather than simply contemplating its topic. In the process of trying to work through

the text critically, my language for explicating FCG became more abstract. While no one advised me to avoid discussions of emotions or change my language, I thought that any other approach to the text would be questioned by my peers and advisors. I saw no model for critical discussion informed by personal experience in my immediate environment.

Topics such as the role of the master narrative, the function of drama in dismantling narratives, and critiques of syntax, spelling and punctuation began to control classroom discussions. While I am aware that certain critical theories--such as reader-response--encourage interaction between readers and texts, many of us still work in environments that show (rather than tell) us that true academic discourse is "serious in tone and conduct. I didn't want students to know how much I loved, and even needed, FCG during different phases of my life, and so I used the languages of theory and criticism to dissipate class energy and encourage proper academic tone.

My approach to teaching FCG remained emotionally distant until I moved to Mississippi and was confronted by a group of angry white males who attacked the text as: "malebashing propaganda," "work that lacked cohesion and craft," and "worthless literature." They even challenged my "right" to teach this text to them. As I tried to give logical, emotionallydetached responses to their objections, I became increasingly angry. Their criticisms sounded both sexist and racist.

Furthermore, because no student had challenged my right to teach this text before now, I began to link their comments to our location in the "heart of Dixie." The graduate student most vocal in his opposition owned a confederate soldier's uniform that he donned on football game weekends to display his pride in his southern heritage. While I was expected to acknowledge his performance as cultural pride, he seemed intent on annihilating my performance as a teacher of FCG. Inside I screamed back at him, but knew that giving voice to my scream would reduce my ability to reach other students. I stopped defending and retreated to silence, while they took turns assaulting the text.

As I listened to them complain, their concerns began to sound familiar. They echoed the critics of FCG in 1979, when the text was first published. I came to understand that their responses were not as influenced by rebel-flag country as they were by the dynamics of our country as a whole. Sydne Mahone observes that, "for colored girls set off a heated national debate, polarizing black men and women. Shange introduced black feminist thought-in-action to theatre and brought a new level of intensity and engagement to the national discourse on race and gender. This theatrical event reclaimed black theatre's role as catalyst for social change" (xxv). So, while the students' attack on "black feminist thought-in-action" left me feeling vulnerable and ready to counter-attack, I knew that they were not solely motivated by southern racial dynamics. They were reacting to the charged language of the poem itself.