Abstract
King uses ritualized narrative to re-contextualize, and further theorize womanist pedagogies of relational social change Black women educators commonly integrate into their work with their Black women students. This narrative portrays the educational significance of this whole person pedagogy as a tool of critical education, leadership development, and recovery from the tripartite oppressions of race, class, and gender cultivated to address the particular race gender needs of their Black women students. Using a poetic discourse to create intersubjectivity, King’s composition reveals the pedagogical elements of this “hidden curriculum” across the spheres of: racial identity development, intra- and intercultural politics, socialization to and navigation of race-gender identity within the dominant culture, presentation of self, preparation for change agentry and social justice leadership.
The title of this work and the prelude’s use of “woman in red” and so on signifies Ntozake Shange’s groundbreaking performance piece for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem (1989, University of Michigan).
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Notes
- 1.
In Ntozake Shange’s pioneering work, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreo-poem (1989, University of Michigan), the seven African American women are designated by a color that they wear rather than a name: the woman in red, woman in orange, woman in yellow, woman in green, woman in blue, woman in brown, and woman in purple. The choreo-pedagogy offered in the present piece intends to give tribute to Shange’s canonical womanist and Black feminist literary contribution. This canonical work ritualized the stories of women of color within their historical, material, personal, and political contexts. For this reason, the artistic strategy originating in Shange’s work is re-employed here to signify its precedence and resonance with this work.
- 2.
From Darder, Antonia ( 2013 ) Critical Leadership for Social Justice and Community Empowerment. Social Policy, Education and Curriculum Research Unit. North Dartmouth: Centre for Policy Analyses/U Mass Dartmouth, http://www.umassd.edu/universitysearch/?q=antonia%20darder
- 3.
This phrase refers to the title and lyrics of a song entitled “There Were No Mirrors in My Nana’s House” by the legendary acapella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. This song is included on their album Still on the Journey, 1993, composed by Dr. Ysaye M. Barnwell, published by Barnwell’s Notes, under the label Earthbeat.
- 4.
This line is a quote from the 2011 film The Help, directed and written by Tate Taylor, and adapted from the novel The Help, written by Kathyrn Stockett (2009).
- 5.
Phrase used in the poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872−1906, entitled “We Wear the Mask.” This poem lives in the canon of Black literature, a precursor to the explosion of art during the Harlem Renaissance.
- 6.
“Wounded in the House of a Friend” (1995) is the title of the title poem for a book of the same name by Sonia Sanchez , poet , essayist, activist, born in 1934, and associated with the Black Arts Movement.
- 7.
The Souls of Black Folks is the title of a book first published in 1903. The author is W.E.B. DuBois, internationally renowned scholar and activist, prolific writer, and iconically named as the father of sociology.
- 8.
See also: “Andrea’s Third Shift: The Invisible Work of African-American Women in Higher Education,” in This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation by Gloria Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keating, Eds, 2002.
- 9.
Postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty coined this term in “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses” (1984). This concept applies to the work of internal change agents or internal activists who fulfill their organizational responsibilities while working toward institutional change.
- 10.
The reference to Ella refers to Civil Rights leader Ella Baker and by implication other Black women Civil Rights leaders who trained others to engage in community activism during the Civil Rights era. Such women leaders engaged in strategic leadership development work with women of the community, and the generation of leaders they trained are referred to as their daughters—commonly denoted by the phrase “Ella’s daughters.”
- 11.
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African-American Feminist Thought edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall (1995) is one of the texts within the canon of Black feminist and Black womanist thought. This text anthologizes the works of Black women activist-intellectuals from the 1830s to contemporary times and their contributions as the foremothers of Black feminist thought and praxis .
- 12.
Signifier of Shirley Chisholm’s autobiography entitled Unbought and Unbossed (1970). Chisholm was the first major-party Black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.
- 13.
This list of women represents some of the iconic Black and Latina women activists and intellectuals from the canon of Black womanist and Black feminist thought. The list includes Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, Anna Julia Cooper, Amy Jacques Garvey, Ida B. Wells, Pauli Murray, Aileen Clark Hernandez, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Betty Shabazz, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Daisy Bates, Diane Nash, Ericka Huggins, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Shirley Chisolm, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde , Alice Walker , Maya Angelou, Delores Huerta, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, June Jordan, Sylvia Rivera, and Gloria Anzaldua.
- 14.
This paraphrased quote is from the novel The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara.
- 15.
“The Tradition that Has No Name” is referred to by Barbara Omolade, in her book The Rising Song of African American Women (1994) as the methods of activist tutelage occurring between Black women within their communities to engage in political action and social change. It is a tradition in which women taught others by actively doing the work of organizing communities, and through oral tradition and praxis . Since it was not “written down,” it remained nameless—known through relational transmission and outcomes rather than written words. Ella Baker’s work is a prime example of this tutelage, and women who learned from her are often referred to as “Ella’s daughters.” See footnote xii.
- 16.
“The Fire Next Time” signifies the title of a book by African American writer James Baldwin (1963).
- 17.
This quote is from a poem by Nikki Giovanni entitled “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)” published in 1972 in a collection of poetry titled My House: Poems, NY: Morrow.
- 18.
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” is an essay. In this essay she speaks to the power of being with our silence, and the deeply reflective process of coming to voice what that silence is as a precursor to clear, centered, and effective action in the world.
- 19.
Thank you to those who gave me feedback or helped to edit earlier drafts of this work: Twisha Asher, Brooke Hayes, Vianna Alcantara, and Jasmine M. McGhee of my spiritual daughterline; beloved womanist intern Rene Guo; and JoAnne Henry, Ph.D., Fareeda Griffith, Ph.D., and S. Alease Ferguson, Ph.D., my sisters in the academic Motherline. Thank you to all the men who work in complementarity with the Motherline, and whose efforts are as tireless, as committed, and as profound. To those who give support, nurture, and Fatherline contributions to students across gender/s, and to those of us who are your colleagues—we appreciate you.
ThinkExist.com Quotations. “Ella Baker quotes.” ThinkExist.com Quotations Online 1 Feb. 2016. 17 Mar. 2016 http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/ella_baker/
- 20.
ThinkExist.com Quotations. “Ella Baker quotes.” think/exist.com/quotation/the-struggle-is-eternal-the-tribe-increase/895851.html accessed August 21, 2017.
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King, T.C. (2018). The Curriculum That Has No Name: A Choreo-pedagogy for Colored Girls Seeking to Fly over the Rainbow. In: Perlow, O., Wheeler, D., Bethea, S., Scott, B. (eds) Black Women's Liberatory Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65789-9_2
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