Hija de las Americas: Latin American themes in A Daughter's Geography and Liliane.(Critical Essay)

Separated by more than a decade, the focus of A Daughter's Geography (1983) and Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter (1994), both by Notozake Shange, couldn't be more different, despite the commonality of the nature of the parent-child relationship explored in them. The Latin American material that forms an important thread in both works is completely reflective of that difference, with that of the first work being much more overtly political, linked with the problematics of dictatorship and the liberation struggles of the early 1980s, and the second more related to the cross-cultural experiences of the 1990s. Five thematic clusters characterize both works: (a) Political and historical references; (b) the legacy of slavery; (c) language, especially in relation to creativity; (d) cross-cultural and cross-racial relationships and experiences, and (e) the arts and literature. In the second work there are also a significant number of religious references, concretely to the Virgin Mary in her various Hispanic forms. The geographic areas specifically cited are, for the most part, ones closely linked with the African experience in the Americas: Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama, but also include Paraguay and Argentina.

The poetry collection A Daughter's Geography starts off with an epigraph, an untitled poem by Rafaela Chacon Nardi, dated La Habana, Cuba, 1982. This in itself constitutes a first "geography lesson." Upon closer examination, the poem also reveals its Afrocuban origin, with its evocation of speech patterns (ruelto) and African-based vocabulary (nambia). The book is comprised of three poetry clusters, the central one entitled "Bocas: A Daughter's Geography," which is where the Latin American material is concentrated. The title poem announces the two most prominent themes: those of language and of liberation struggles. Shange links the aspirations of the Black peoples of Africa with those of the New World: "our twins/Salvador & Johannesburg/cannot speak/the same language/but we fight the same old men/in the new world" (21). She evokes the age-old struggle against the "old men" who spit on those they have enslaved, who use religion to serve their social and economic purposes, who think that the dead cannot procreate, who think they can stop people with helicopters and patrol boats, whose view of the world is still flat (21-22). The "old men" that have always existed are the same ones they're still fighting in the liberation struggles of Nicaragua, El Salvador, Yucatan, Panama and elsewhere. And while she does not specifically name the United States, she clearly is pointing to the misguided and fruitless efforts of U.S. foreign policy in the Americas to thwart Latin American aspirations (22). The solidarity among the oppressed peoples of the world will grow, despite those efforts: "Go on over the edge old men/you'll see us in luanda, or the rest of us/in chicago/rounding out the morning/we are feeding our children the sun" (22-23).

The second poem, "Tween Itaparica & Itapua," treats Brazil, apparently based on a family trip there. "Itaparica is where dona flor took her two husbands" (24). She contrasts the Brazil of the favelas with the well-known tourist attractions, such as the Cristo Redentor of Corcovado, Copacabana beach, the Sheraton hotel, pointing out the irony of the case of Rocinha--the only favela with a legal city sign, where poverty is not only rampant but institutionalized. A visit to the island of Itaparica near Salvador allows her to think back on the past, on the arrival of slave ships and the labor a "bahiano africano pretu moreno mulatto" (25) that was responsible for the creation of the cobblestone street they now walk on. Itapua also has its reminders of slavery, with the church on the highest hill ("the safest place for slave owners/on crests of waves of slaves/who could not more without being seen" (25). The Brazilian landscape and music ultimately produce a sense of calm and confidence, "letting me know/all i see is true/we areas impregnable as night/as dangerous" (26).

The theme of linguistic issues is explored in "You are Sucha Fool," including an allusion to the multicultural reality of New York as the unnamed lover speaks "spanish like a german & ask[s] puerto rican/marketmen on Lexington if they are foreigners" (28)

--another geography lesson?

"A Black Night in Haiti, Palais National, Port-au-Prince" is a devastating look at the extremes of Haiti, the lofty ideals on which it was founded and the depressing reality, the luxuries and excesses of the privileged few in midst of starvation and misery of the masses, the assertion that there is no violence in Haiti, and that all the prostitutes come from the Dominican Republic, the begging children, half-naked women sleeping on the street, and the one-legged man all contrast with the marble horses, plumed hats and swords. Where are those ideals now, she asks, when Haiti's in need? (36).

The poem "Hijo de las Americas" is, in my mind, perhaps the most powerful dual denunciation of racism and dictatorship in the work. Set in the Atlantic coast region of Nicaragua, "where the English left Nicaragua black & poor" (49), she decries Somoza's violence against poets ("Somoza jailed poets killed poets maimed, poets," 49). The unidentified poet Carlos has only a few remaining poems that had been saved on scraps that could be hidden in his shoe, as his other works were burned by his friends "when the security police la guardia nacional/came looking for a free black mind" (49). Carlos's wounds are both psychic and physical, as he suffers from the loss of his creative work and from an undescribed wound in his leg from the war that does not allow him to stand in line for his lunch, leading to the author's resolve to get him medical assistance: "he must be able to stand up when he poets his black black language/the raggae of america libre ..." (49). And it leads to her resolve to remind her "poet friends in America/to keep matches in their houses/i must remember that everywhere nothing can be taken for granted" (49). The role of poets in making future generations aware is stressed at the close of the poem, with the cautionary note that "if we burn with the poems/who shall tell the children/why" (50). The universality of the situation is underscored with the final line, resembling a dateline, simply "el salvador" (50).