Violence, Ritual, and Vogue: Black Queer Feminist Praxis in Motion

Abstract:As an unapologetically Black feminist artist, Ntozake Shange furthered the cause of black girl representation on Broadway stages with the 1976 debut of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Shange’s award-winning choreopoem eschews the masculinist liberation discourse of the Black Power era and instead centers the concerns of Black girls within the freedom struggle. Using twenty poems interlaced with dance and music, Shange illuminates the subjectivity of seven “colored girls” who experience sexual, emotional, and physical violence in their communities. Committed to the health and safety of the entire Black community, Shange concludes the performance with a ritual dance to foster unity and community healing from violence. Her early Black feminist intervention serves as a foundation for the artistic work of Black Lives Matter activists today, many of whom continue to use ritual performances to promote community healing in the wake of white-authored violence. Black Lives Matter movement artists and activists Gorgeous Mother Karma Gucci, Adonte Prodigy, and Amya Miyake-Mugler, for example, performed ritual Voguing at a Chicago demonstration on 3 June 2020 to bring greater visibility to the intracultural violence reaped upon Black queer and transgender girls. Their ritual Voguing, which I situate as Black queer feminist praxis in motion, reimagines the Black radical tradition as collective liberation. Collectively, the work of Shange, Gucci, Prodigy, and Mugler affirms the vital truth that none of us are free until all of us are free.