It is that time of year again: February. This year, in honor of the contributions of Black Americans, I plan to write a portrait of what I feel is an underappreciated contributor to American culture. That means that George Washington Carver and Martin Luther King, Jr. probably won't get profiled. Benjamin Banneker probably won't show up here either. But that also means you might want to read extra close because you mind find out about something that you didn't even know existed.
Writing this, I realize that not everything will make sense until the project is complete. If you don't know who Dunbar is, keep reading and in a few days you will find out.
Ntozake Shange is primarily a playwright, most famous for for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. She has also written several novels, volumes and poetry, and books of creative non-fiction. If I Can Cook / You Know God Can is a tremendous collection of essays. On the surface, it is about food and eating, but it seamlessly moves between genres, encompassing history, cultural anthropology, theology and memoir within its pages.
My favorite work of Shange's is a play called Spell #7. The play is about a black theatre troupe who is only able to find work by performing in black face. The play opens with the actors taking their bows at the end of a performance. The rest of the play takes place backstage in the dressing room. As layers of blackface come off, layers of self-loathing are exposed. The actors signify on each other in a variety of ways, and the play becomes about how the black community deals with having to constantly live behind Dunbar's mask and having to play up to the expected and stereotyped front expected by white culture in order to be accepted, and the psychological reprecussions of such a mask. It is a powerful piece of work.
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