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Questions for Tuesday (from pages 7-10):
1. The stage directions for this poem mention dances like "the pony" and "the big boss line." Have you seen those dances before?
2. Why do you think the ladies aren't given names?
3. Was the lady in yellow's V status abnormal for 18 (in 1960s)?
4. How does Shange's spelling of certain words (i.e. cd for could) help/hinder your reading of the poem?
5. What made the lady in yellow feel grown? Do you agree with her?
2 comments:
1. I don't dance. So I don't know that I know them or not.
2. I think it adds to a certain universal quality that they share. But also, it's an indication in some ways of their voicelessness. Their subjugated identities.
3. I imagine it was.
4. On one hand, it situates the writing as poetry (sort of a re-imagined iambic pentameter) and on the other, colors the text within a certain specific cultural context which it isn't necessarily simulating so much as nodding to.
5. The juking, I think. I don't think it makes you grown, but it makes you feel grown to finally do something without inhibitions that your parents wouldn't allow you. In some ways, her freedom to have sex is making her an adult (I disagree, however, that she actually has to have it. The freedom is enough).
1. I saw a YouTube video of the pony. It was funny. It looks like prancing.
2. Yes, I think she was trying to represent types of women that other women can relate to, or are.
3. I asked my mom about it indirectly. She told me that in her first job working with middle schoolers, a handful of girls were pregnant by the end of the school year. By high school then, I imagine it might have been strange that she was.
4. The spelling makes me think of texting, or even the spelling of young children who spell phonetically. There's the cultural aspect too, I know a lot of the other Black poets of this time used similar spelling (i.e. Nikki Giovanni, Amiri Baracka, etc.)
5. I don't think she's grown either, but she thinks that she is.
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