Privacy & Its Ritual Functions, PART II

The ritual of affliction is a type of spontaneous ritual in that the practitioner utilizes it to overcome sudden and cosmic disorder in her own world. The confessional mode helps us categorize these forms of ritual action to understand just how transformative this ritualized moment in Shange’s narrative is. Indigo prefaces her ritual instructions, stating, “Though it may cause some emotional disruptions, stand absolutely still & repeat the offender’s name till you are overwhelmed with the memory of your encounter.” She acknowledges that suffering is part and parcel to her liminal circumstance, yet she does not shirk her duty as one who moves between worlds. This reticence is characteristic of the confessional mode. “Rituals do not tidy what is messy in ordinary life; they express them and perform change.”  By ritualizing the process of healing, Indigo “performs her becoming”; she discards all identification with victimhood and her confessions of vulnerability and strength demand that the cosmos do the same.

The spontaneous and personal ritual helps the neophyte overcome individual obstacles and assistsher efforts to negotiate intergenerational conflict between herself and her immediate community, such as how or whether or not “to be mo’ in this world.” And while Indigo recognizes the power of renewal in other worlds, her mother can only see danger. Although Hilda Effania represents a conservative and limiting voice in Indigo’s life, she also fosters in Indigo an artistic sensibility and understanding of her self-worth. Likewise, each of Indigo’s lady friends represents a “personification of the self-evident authority of tradition.” Indigo—who has just experienced menarche—and her elderly lady friends epitomize the tense relationship between the initiate and her elders. While Indigo does cherish and engage with various aspects diasporic traditions, she still begets a womanhood that is unfamiliar to her own mother. Mrs. Haydee trains Indigo in midwifery, Mrs. Yancey acquaints her with acquisition spells, and Sister Mary Louise unveils to Indigo the nature of magic during her menarche ritual. Each of these conversations forms “an alternative educational system,” which constitute the basis of Indigo’s ways of knowing.

Indigo clearly loves and respects the women who have informed her perception of the cosmos, but this star child neophyte cannot ignore the dynamism of her cosmic cycle. Like I mentioned, in the liminal state, the neophyte is compelled to reflect on structures of power. “The essence of the complete obedience of the neophytes is to submit to the elders but only in so far as they are in charge … of the common good and represent in their persons the total community.” Herein lies the reason Indigo cannot fully oblige the ritual practices of her elderly lady friends or the admonishments of her mother. Her elders cannot constitute “the total community” as they represent various, fluctuating value systems. While the magic they employ may facilitate order in one realm of the cosmos, it is not certain that that magic will sustain the transformative act required in another realm. Thus, Indigo must adhere to certain traditions and diverge from others. She takes what she needs and leaves the rest. In doing so, she negotiates her own vision as a healer and gatekeeper within an undeniably fragmented world.

While the personal construction of ritual facilitates autonomy and freedom of expression, it incurs risks nevertheless. Indigo has to forgo the protection of the exclusively traditional magic she practices alongside her lady friends in order to accurately interpret the urgency of her affliction and improvise her own healing acts. In doing so, she experiences the powerful transformational quality of spontaneous ritual construction. In this confessional mode, Indigo alone determines the extent of her transformation.

At the end of the novel, Shange signals to the reader that Indigo has, indeed, successfully undergone her ritual of affliction and obtained healing. Indigo muses to herself, “Would they understand [I] just wanted where they [her mother, lady friends, her people] came from to stay alive?” Indigo’s question suggests she has emerged from the liminal state. She realizes that it is her discretion that will now determine the magic she needs to function well and whole. She has more faith in her capabilities as a star child of Geechee magic. Indigo’s performs her becoming through her resolution to take only the elements of magic she needs from her elders, signaling her willingness to take responsibility for her ethical and spiritual development. Her very personal ritual text, “To Rid Oneself of the Scent of Evil,” denotes her profound transformation of identity.

The fact that Indigo is able to function as a productive and creative member of her Charleston community—post-affliction—indicates that healing has taken place. For example, over the course of the novel, Indigo learns to play the fiddle. At one rendezvous, she encounters a “brown-skinned man with … leathery hands, and a tiredness in his eyes”—clearly, he is weary of cosmic disorder. With her fiddle, Indigo “bring[s] her soul all up in his till she’[s] ferreted out the most lovely moment in that man’s life.” Even Aunt Haydee, the conjurer-midwife, notices and appreciates how people now seek “Indigo for relief from elusive disquiet, hungers of the soul.” This Geechee initiate has managed to emerge from her liminal state as productive, creative, and fearless as ever. In her essay, “The Cartography of Memory: An Ecocritical Reading of Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo, Anissa J. Wardi notes, “The seemingly illusory world that claimed the young Indigo has, by the novel’s end, materialized into a life that empowers her as a community healer.” Remarkably, Indigo’s spontaneous rituals manage to, not only propel her from an “ambiguous and paradoxical condition” but also to sustain the transformative growth and healing of those in her wider community.

I love Shange’s novel because she beautifully depicts the fluctuating nature of human existence; sometimes we are joyful; sometimes we make space to mourn. Sometimes we play the fiddle; sometimes we spend afternoons on the corner with the neighborhood drunkard. Especially, though, I’m enamored by her reverence for ritual practice. Shange, expresses on the page what many of us know intuitively: Ritual allows us to maintain order internally anddd to exert our power over circumstances seemingly outside of ourselves. Melanated women have BEEN using ritual to negotiate our existence in a rapidly changing, oftentimes dangerous world. Ritual renders the melanated women innovator. Officiating priestess.

Do you have a favorite ritual? When do you call it on it especially? Are you a Shange die-hard? Share share share!

Suggested Readings:

Brown-Guillory, Elizabeth. “Introduction: On Their Way to Becoming Whole.” Middle Passage and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black Women’s Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Brown-Guillory. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2006. 1-13. Print.

Driver, Tom F. The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Lives and Our Communities. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Print.

Elder, Arlene. “Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo: Ntozake Shange’s Neo-Slave/Blues Narrative.” African-American Review. 26:1 (1992): 99-107. Web. 6 December 2013.

                          

Gennep, Arnold van. The Rites of Passage. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1960. Print.

Grimes, Ronald L. Beginnings in Ritual Studies. Lanham: UP of America, 1982. Print.

Seligman, Adam B., Robert P. Weller, Michael J. Puett, and Bennett Simon. Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. New York: Oxford U P, 2008.

Sered, Susan Starr. Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women. New York: Oxoford U P, 1994. Print.

Shange, Ntozake. Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1982. Print.

Thompson-Cager, Chezia. “Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo: Resistance and Mystical Women of Power.” NWSA Journal. 1:4 (1989): 589-601. Web. 30 June 2013.

Turner, Victor W. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. New York: Cornell UP, 1967. 234-243. Print.

--. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. “Communitas: Model and Process.” Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977. 131-165. Print.

Tweed, Thomas. Cross and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2006. Print.

Wardi, Anissa Janine. “The Cartography of Memory: An Ecocritical Reading of Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo. African-American Review. 45:1-2 (2012): 131-142. Web. 4 December 2013.

Washington, Teresa N. Our Mothers, Our Powers, Our Texts: Manifestations of Àjé in Africana Literature. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005. Print.