| Abstrakt: |
This chapter explores the orphic power of music in Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, a tale of three sisters by Ntozake Shange. Shange as an orphic performer is also examined in this chapter. Music figures significantly but differently in each of the three sisters' stories. Indigo is a powerful spiritual figure, a visionary with supernatural connections for whom music is a vehicle for self-expression and spiritual liberation, and a tool she utilizes in healing and childbirth. Sassafrass is a weaver, a cook, and an aspiring but blocked writer who is inspirited by visits from famous musicians of the past and seduced and silenced by the music of her lover, Mitch. Cypress is a dancer whose movement is inspired by music and whose creative energy is rekindled by the music of a second musician, Leroy. Like many African American women writers, Shange views musicians as models for writers to emulate in giving voice to their experience with power and grace. Shange and other writers seek to recreate the performative and expressive qualities of music in their writing. Like a performer, Shange seeks to create a situation where engagement and response is immediate and irresistible. In addition, Shange's attention to visual aspects of literature on the page suggests aspirations of performativity. She uses the visual realm to evoke aural aspects of performance in her writing. The value Shange places on her ability to stimulate audience participation and response through her writing is in keeping with the traditional aesthetics of African American musical performance. One way in which Shange demands reader participation in Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is through her inclusion of recipes. In Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, Shange works hard to engage the reader emotionally. Relationships seem to be a vehicle for Shange, much as they are in the blues, to explore emotions and evoke feeling responses. Interactions between her characters often embody intense feelings. |
