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

Whether I am attending a conference or relaxing in an informal setting, people who discover that I teach at the University of Mississippi inevitably ask: "How do you feel about teaching at Ole Miss?" "It's a great place to teach," I customarily reply. Depending on the audience, I may add comments such as, "We have great research support, a diverse student body, and there is a great working relationship between the university and the town." While a few people walk away content with this answer, most stare blankly then ask in a hushed tone, "No, I mean what does it REALLY feel like to teach there?" The interjected "REALLY' and its tone of delivery usually implies that the interrogator is searching for an in-depth discussion of how it feels to be a Black woman teaching in a historically white environment. Even more specifically, how can an African-American woman teach African-American literature to a historically-white body of students: students who are known for plastering rebel-flags atop car bumpers; students whose ancestry is inextricably tied to slavery, sharecropping, and defensive stands against civil rights; students who, each time the basketball or football team scores, collectively languish in song: "I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away, look away, look away, Dixieland."

Because the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) fought a very public battle against integration in the 1 960s, many people expect our students to have deep racial and cultural allegiances that negatively impact their ability to receive racially-informed material. They believe that racism is so deeply rooted in this environment that it would be impossible to touch the hearts and minds of non-Black students. While these beliefs are untrue, the school's own location as a place with dual identities (one for white students and one for cultural others), encourages people to view it in relationship to this cultural positioning, rather than in connection to its educational offerings. For example, one of the most popular slogans of the school proclaims: one graduates and regretfully ends tenure at The University of Mississippi, but one never graduates from Ole Miss." The first name implies the school's role as a state institution with a curriculum to be completed for graduation, but the second name situates the schoo l in a history of white privilege and black oppression. The assertion that one never graduates from Ole Miss seems to confirm that cultural beliefs and practices established on the campus continue long after the educational curriculum is completed. Even though the current Chancellor funded a study to consider the implications of the school's symbols and led a drive to eliminate symbols that offended large groups of people, the identity of the University of Mississippi continues to rest within dualities. A more concrete example of the university's display of dual heritages is visible in the structure of the Lyceum-the first state building erected for the purposes of higher education. The Lyceum signifies the university's cornerstone position in state education and thus appears in much of our official public relations material. When the Lyceum was built, education here was for white males only, and so the building has come to represent the legacy of racially segregated education. At the same time, however, its stately white columns were permanently altered by bullets fired as James Meredith and the National Guard fought to integrate Ole Miss. Thus, the building also symbolizes the establishment and dissolution of segregated education in Mississippi. In classrooms situated in such a marked environment, it seems reasonable for people to expect hostile contests--rather than sensible dialogue--about race and identity.

I arrived on campus as a new teacher with many of the same assumptions, imagining students would have an intimate awareness of the history informing texts in the African American tradition; I assumed that they would be eager to discuss the intersections of race and gender in literature and lived reality because they were housed within historic walls. Every day, they literally walk through and around monuments of the history of American racial and political conflicts. How could they enter the classroom without knowing of the fire of Richard Wright, the creativeness of William Faulkner, and the determination of Fannie Lou Hamer? To prepare for these students, I created a survey class in African American Literature that could have easily been subtitled, "Mississippi in Black Literature." The course readings included: Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Aint Like Mine, because it recreates the history of Mississippi's infamous Emmit Till case; Richard Wright's Black Boy, because Wright shares autobiographical inform ation about growing up in Jim Crow Mississippi; and Alice Walker's Meridian, because of its examination of Civil Rights activity in Mississippi.

I was correct in assuming that many students at the University of Mississippi would have a special connection to the history informing the material presented. I taught students with fascinating connections to history, including descendants of Blacks who worked for William Faulkner and claimed him as an ancestor, the great- granddaughter of the sheriff in the Emmit Till case, the niece of Fannie Lou Hamer, and numerous white students whose parents and grandparents told them they had witnessed the lynching of Black men. To my surprise, however, the descendants of this history were often as emotionally removed from the discussion of Black history and literature as students I had met in other parts of the country. In other words, their dear physical connections to history did not translate into dear emotional and physical connections.

As I tried to convey the emotional, spiritual, and social sentiments impacting Black writing from previous generations, it became apparent that I alone looked at people and places in our immediate environment as representations of the transformation of history. Most students looked at these people as unremarkable. The historical landmarks were to them simply places to meet, greet and handle daily business. In spite of our unique geographic location, I soon discovered that students here often speak of racial affiliations as choices that do not necessarily shape reality, and many just do not get what the "big deal" is (or was) with race.

While their lack of awareness may signify progress in American race relations, these gaps in knowledge make it difficult for those of us who teach racially-grounded materials to share the full impact of how socio-historical contexts impact African-American writings. My lectures and our collective discussions on this literature were often received as information to memorize, package, and present back to me on tests and in response papers. Frustrated with classroom dialogues and student papers, I often thought of Johnny Paul's declaration in Earnest Gaines's Gathering Of Old Men: "But you still don't see.... You don't even know what I don't see" (89). In order to break through walls of emotional resistance, my teaching style and method has now been wrapped around my need to help students get formal considerations of the text, while at the same time calling attention to the emotional and spiritual weight of the writing.

THE MODEL: USING PERFORMANCE FOR TRANSGRESSION

The tool I find most successful in moving students to "getting" how African American texts speak from and to racialized identities is performance. I believe that all cultures contain organic models for educating that can be used to transmit the value of that culture's artistic and material productions. In African-American cultural history, we find repeated use of performance to educate, uplift, and challenge audiences.

The use of performance to teach African-American cultural history builds on the culture's subversive use of performance to transgress in Black communal spaces--including church preaching moments, hip-hop musical lyrics, and stand-up comedy routines. For example, in traditionally Black church settings, the preacher and choir members are responsible for embodying and performing for a congregation the excitement one receives from submitting to the will of God. In hip-hop music, lyricists educate young audiences by performing songs that challenge oppressive ideas. And, in contemporary comedy, the performance is a vehicle for acting out and ultimately challenging accepted knowledge. In each of these three cultural environments, performances are designed to educate, uplift, and expand the views of an audience. When the use of performance is transferred from the stage to the classroom, ideologies professed by students and instructors alike can be challenged.

While some may find the comparison of teaching to performing troubling, teaching any subject often requires the teacher to stand before a class and embody or perform the meaning of that subject. All of us perform our own excitement and knowledge in our respective fields, and we also perform the need for our students to take our subject matter seriously. bell hooks further addresses the "performative" in good teaching, explaining that "... it is that aspect of our work that offers the space for change, invention, land] spontaneous shifts" (11). When we yield to the performative in our classrooms, we generate excitement and energy. We also give students a model of how a person can perform multiple knowledges. In doing so, we map a way for students to explore their own connections to ideas, bodies and the larger world.

Performance of opposing ideas by a teacher helps relax and intellectually charge the classroom atmosphere. Seeing "authority figures" move between commitments exposes our vulnerabilities and demonstrates that we are willing to risk/relinquish control of the classroom fir the advancement of knowledge. This helps students feel safe suspending their own assumptions and acting out competing ideologies. Also, when classroom moments are clearly labeled performative, students can feel at ease giving voice to diverse ideas that activate critical thinking, challenge readings of the text, and--when most successful--impact how they view life beyond classroom boundaries.

TEACHING NTOZAKE SHANGE

To show how performance can be used to transgress in the classroom, I will share personal struggles with teaching Ntozake Shange's choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (FCG, 1979). I will discuss how performance of the voices in her text helped me challenge established knowledge patterns of students. Shange's poem is comprised of testimonials about different coming of age experiences for Black women. Patricia Hill Collins describes it as a text that "captures [the Black female's] journey toward self-definition, self-valuation, and an empowered self' (112). It begins with a woman's request that "somebody/anybody sing a black girl's song/bring her our/to know herself/to know god/but sing her rhythms.. let her be born" (4,5). It then progresses by sharing personal experiences that gradually let Black women "be born" on stage: the characters share girlhood experiences, adolescent challenges, and womanhood realities. They lose their virginity, sneak off to dances, exper ience date rape, abortion, physical abuse, and other traumas, but they are all ultimately healed at the play's conclusion through "a layin' on of hands," where they touch one another to heal their community.

My connection to the play has been personal from the time I witnessed a partial performance at a high-school drama tournament. A competitor performed a selection from FCG entitled "Sorry," exclaiming (in part),

One thing i don't need is any
 more apologies
I got sorry greetin' me at my
 front door
you can keep yrs/ i don't know
 what to do wit em
they don't open doors/ or bring
 the sun back
they dont make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didnt nobody stop usin my
 tears to wash cars
because of sorry.... (56)

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.

It was time to switch teaching strategies. This was a moment for me to reclaim the role of Black performance "as a catalyst for social change." I called for a break, divided the class into small groups of four and instructed each group to collectively interpret and perform one segment of the text before the class. Because FCG presents only Black female characters and I was teaching a class of 30 students with only five Black women, their performances demanded that most students give up their own race and gender locales and momentarily travel inside a place marked by different perceptions of reality. To help them overcome some of the problems presented by our diverse backgrounds, I encouraged them to add additional gestures and words to the text.

One of the most memorable groups performed "Toussaint," a segment of FCG relating the narrative of a young girl who wins a reading contest but loses her award after library officials discover that one of her books, a biography of Toussaint L'Ouverture (the Haitian revolutionary), was taken from the adult reading room. The young girl runs away from home in disgust and meets a young boy who shares the name Toussaint. Young Toussaint Jones convinces her to talk to him by asserting, "i am toussaint jones /& i'm right heah looking at ya/ & i dont take no stuff from no white folks/ya dont see none round heah do ya?" (31). The two become fast friends and the young girl is able to better realize the importance of maintaining relationships with the past and present.

The group of students responsible for acting out this section included a Black male from the Caribbean named Roosevelt. Roosevelt convinced his group to insert a portion of a speech credited to Toussaint that he had memorized (in French) while in high school. Before their collective interpretation of Shange's text, Roosevelt gave a passionate rendering of Toussaint's speech to motivate the Haitians to fight. His performance challenged the anti-male readings of Shange's text on several levels. First, his performance of a character who has no voice in the piece called attention to Shange's inclusion of a positive Black man in FCG. Second, it connected L'Ouverture's role in the development of Black intellectual activity in Haiti to the development of intellectualism in the mind of the young Black girl speaking in the piece. Finally, better than any theoretical article I could present to the class, his reading effectively displayed how different cultural backgrounds change what we hear when listening to a text.

As each group took the floor, I suspended my role as teacher/performer and became an audience member, eager to see how they would direct and perform the pieces. Would they try to counteract Shange's Black feminism in action? Would they mock or degrade her commentary? Surprisingly, none of the groups attempted to change the politics of the piece; instead, their performances opened class dialogue and helped us better discuss authorial intent, the elasticity of reading experiences and knowledge claims. We also contemplated ways that culture impacts our perceptions of writing and the world. To close the class meeting, I met the challenge of performance I issued to students by reclaiming my role as actress and performing "Sorry" and discussing my personal experiences with the text.

Many of the students who were initially angry with me for choosing the text reread it before returning to class. They reported that they were able to gain new meaning and appreciation for Shange's project. They finally seemed able to understand (or get) what I had unsuccessfully attempted to convey in the language of theory and criticism all semester: that African American texts carry emotional weight often designed to work towards better self-definition and cultural pronouncement, and that the texts are not usually focused on negating other cultures. Students seemed encouraged by our collective risk-taking and were more willing to share diverse opinions in subsequent classes that semester. I was especially surprised by positive reactions from graduate students, whom I expected to feel imposed upon and insulted by my request for them to perform in an academic setting. Several wrote about the experience as one that challenged their perceptions of graduate education.

Because of the significant positive impact of performance on my ability to reach students that semester, and because I continue to use it to break through classroom silences, I have few regrets about my decision to use drama. In fact, only two drawbacks are significant enough to share with teachers considering integrating performance moments into their classes. The first challenge is the amount of time students have to spend preparing for a few moments of in-class performance. We use large amounts of time to brainstorm as a class about identity politics. Groups then meet together during class time to prepare their performances, and we spend class time generating performance moments, interjecting ourselves and our realities into the text.

Performance also takes away from my introductions to the unique influences of each writer. To counteract my own insecurities about not providing enough critical information during class time, I provide students with handouts containing specifics about the text: performance/publication dates, the artists' thoughts about writing and the text being read, excerpts from various interviews, and selected reviews.

The second concern I face using this model is wondering what my colleagues must think when they hear that I am staging performances in advanced literature courses. As an untenured professor, it is important that my colleagues know that I take my work inside and outside of the classroom seriously. Therefore, I am somewhat unnerved by student conversations with other professors about my pedagogical style. These worries are somewhat allayed when I take the focus away from colleague responses and concentrate on the power of student responses. In this first group of students who performed Shange, the response papers, which blend personal reflection and critical analysis, were more personal than those submitted for any other text. Robert, one of the white males who was especially difficult to deal with in the initial class discussion, shared:

given our volatile class discussion on this work, one would think that I have a great deal of reaction for this work. In reality, while I hold on to some of my initial and admittedly defensive reactions, I find that a more comprehensive reading of this work and additional time for reflection has tempered my initial response. It is this very ability to add meaning to my reading of a work through class discussion, involving the sharing of others' perspectives, and re-reading of the work itself that both encourages me to continue the study of literature and discourages blindly clinging to any belief....

In that same group of papers, Valerie, a Black female student working in student affairs at the University expressed:

Reading the poems could give ... answers and provide ... some relief to the situations which I know students deal with often. More than a few of our African American females are living destructive lives. Reading For Colored Girls made me want to purchase several books and hand them out at the Union like the group of men with free Bibles do once a semester. Reading this book made me want to grab my children and read them the poems from the book in hopes that the words might prevent them from encountering certain situations.

While these students speak from two distinct places, both show how performance added depth to textual perceptions. Students were challenged and ultimately changed by walking into--and watching others walk into--alternate identities.

Since this experience, I have used performance to break through the ideological walls that come between my students and myself in different ways each semester. Performing identities from different pieces can help students gain new understanding of the emotional weight of those texts. For example, when teaching Harriet Wilson's antebellum novel, Our Nig, students are required to stage a talk show featuring the protagonist Frado, and members of the Belmont family (the family Frado serves as an indentured servant). Students who perform the major characters of the text must study the novel's specific characterizations of their assigned roles.

Moreover, students who sit in the audience must study socio-historical characterizations, because they are called upon to represent perspectives contemporary to the text. They perform, for example, opinions and views they believe would be espoused by people with different ideological ties, such as: a white male slave-holder, a white female who employs indentured servants, a young student attending school with the Belmont family, a legally freed black slave, or a former slave who works with abolitionists. We spend one class period discussing the historical beliefs and concerns of each group and major character. At the end of the class, students are randomly assigned identities.

At the next meeting, we perform our talk show. I serve as the show's host as a way of expressing collaborative learning between teacher and students. I guide them with questions such as: "Frado, what do you expect to accomplish by sharing this story with the general public?" "Mrs. Belmont can you explain the connections between your religious beliefs and your treatment of Frado?" I ask the audience of historical characters, "Are there members of the community that this family lives in that can tell me how you feel about what is going on in the Belmont home?" Each student must foreground his/her responses with an announcement of the identity that he/she is speaking from for the day.

I have found that demanding students to speak from different places is useful in two distinct ways. First, it encourages students to walk outside of their own identities when formulating opinions. The first is an essential part of pedagogy for the twenty-first century. Kulynych argues that "while students are locked in student identities, they cannot learn what is unimaginable from that identity; that is taking responsibility for knowledge itself" (146). Performance responds to this dilemma by unlocking the restraints of self identity and freeing students to explore a variety of knowledge claims.

Second, performance opens a space for students who are shy to share. Many of our more popular student athletes are wary of speaking in class because they are afraid of how negative comments may hinder them professionally. They do not want their comments about race or racism to appear in school newspapers or to circulate within the student body. While this fear may seem unfounded, athletes are not alone in their concerns. Many other students have diverse thoughts, but are afraid to speak in front of others while they are still formulating ideas. They are afraid of being labeled racist, naive, or uninformed by peers. Allowing these cautious students to speak in performance and assume another's position helps them become comfortable participating in class conversations. When students know that audiences cannot ascribe the ideas they express to them as individuals, the cost of speech is not as high and they speak with more ease.

CONCLUSIONS

What began as an exercise to overcome a specific problem in a specific context turned into a pedagogical tool that I believe can be useful in interdisciplinary courses and in multiple contexts. As student demographics and curricula become more diverse, many teachers will wrestle with new teaching strategies to meet student needs. Regardless of our areas of expertise, all educators are responsible for taking control of classroom environments. We all attempt to teach students how they can use the knowledge claims of our fields beyond the walls of our classrooms. Laura Bates captures our interdisciplinary similarities in her assertion that, a good teacher... is by turns a playwright, actor, director, and audience--continually shifting 31 roles in response to a continuously shifting class dynamic" (122). When we as teachers begin sharing our own performances, we prepare a way for more effective student performances in our areas of expertise.

Performing alternate ideas helps students to develop clearer understandings of how ideology operates; they learn to suspend their own ideas long enough to speak to--and listen to--diverse knowledge claims. When students are able to speak from both real and imaginary identities they are better prepared to put opposing thoughts into conversation with one another. I strongly believe that educators in the twenty-first century must confront increasingly diverse classrooms not only by shifting what we discuss in the classroom, but by also shifting how we approach teaching and classroom practices. By consciously performing our own knowledges, and encouraging student performances of their knowledges, teachers equip students to get the cultural narratives at work in classroom texts and in communal contexts.

WORKS CITED

Bates, Laura. "Commentary: Theatre as Teaching Metaphor." College Teaching 46 (1998): 122.

Gaines, Ernest. A Gathering of Old Men. 1983. New York Vintage, 1984.

Hill-Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge, 1990.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York Routledge, 1994.

Kulynych, Jessica J. "Crossing Disciplines: Postmodernism and Democratic Education." College Teaching 46 (1998): 144-149.

Mahone, Sydne. "Introduction." Moon Marked and Touched By Sun. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994. xiii-xxxiii.

Middleton, Sue. Educating Feminists: Life Histories and Pedagogies. New York: Teachers College Press, 1993.

Moreland, Richard. Learning From Difference; Teaching Morrison, Twain, Ellison, and Elliott. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1999.

Olinayan, Tejumula. Scars of Conquest/Masks ofResistance. New York: Oxford UP, 1995.

Shange, Nrozake. for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. New York MacMillan, 1989.

ETHEL YOUNG-MINOR is an assistant professor of English and Afro-Studies at the University of Mississippi. She loves teaching and has published in the College Language Association Journal, Women's Studies International Forum, and in the Zora Neale Hurston Forum.