Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

A free and responsible press serving the UMass community since 1890

Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Women of color shock audience with honesty, cultural insight

If you didn’t see Body Politics 2010, a show presented on April 16 and 17, you missed the most powerful and engaging performance of the semester.

Presented by the Women of Color Leadership Network (WCLN), a program of the Everywoman’s Center, Body Politics 2010 is a collection of monologues written by and talking about women of color. During this year’s performance, 18 women transcended their roles as students, faculty, mothers and daughters to share their deepest emotions with a crowded Bowker Auditorium.

The evening opened with a few words spoken by Hind Mari, director of the WCLN program. After giving the obligatory thank-you’s, Mari pointed out that this show, in its seventh year, is “as unique and diverse as the women in it,” and that she hoped the production would educate audience members.

First onto the auditorium stage came six female high school students, all participants in the Girls, Incorporated program based in Holyoke. Girls, Inc. has a self-declared goal of inspiring young girls “to be strong, smart and bold” by providing a positive and educational environment for them to thrive in. The six lively girls who attended Friday night’s performance recited a collection of poems, including descriptions of themselves, as well as descriptions of their individual cultural and ethnic roots.

The main event opened with a monologue about space, describing not only the safe space that the performers encouraged throughout the auditorium, but also addressing the other spaces that have been deemed unsafe by hate and segregation. The cast members described themselves as leaders and activists, and prepared audience members for what they were about to witness by reminding their own parents that they are no longer little girls. Overall, the theme of the night was to respect the performers and their opinions, and acknowledge the information they were unleashing into the crowd.

While most topics addressed were ones which primarily affect non-white women, such as dreadlocks and Black Entertainment Television, other monologues touched upon subjects that matter to all females, such as rape, motherhood and healthy relationships.

One resounding message that was portrayed was the idea of conforming to stereotypes. Cast member and University of Massachusetts junior Rosaline Abraham led the ensemble in a monologue titled “Too Much of Everything” to address this idea, proclaiming that everyone is considered to be too much of something – too tall, too skinny, too black – but owning these attributes is important to self-acceptance. She reminded audience members that they can never be too much of themselves.

A more humorous segment was presented as a way of showing that assimilating a multitude of cultures into one’s lifestyle does not cause a person to understand the traditions, food, clothes and dances of that culture. For example, the UMass dining halls attempt to incorporate a different menu in honor of Black History Month resulted in offering foods stereotypically eaten by blacks, such as fried chicken and cornbread. One cast member went so far as to exclaim, “Just because you slept with a black guy in Southwest does not mean you understand black culture!”

The girls pleaded with the audience members to work for their black education, not to mooch off stereotypes portrayed in television, music, art or other forms of mainstreamed culture.

In another personal anecdote, Malis Loeung, a mother of two and UMass Amherst staff member, addressed her feelings towards the toys available to her children. While her son enjoys playing with toy guns, she feels that this speaks to the “high and unjust number of black men in jails.” She believes that her daughter, who plays with Barbie dolls, shouldn’t be confined to the idea of letting a man to hand her a fairy-tale ending.

Many girls thanked their family members after their deep and honest monologues, saying that they helped them overcome racial struggles. The women constantly challenged themselves and each other to confront their personal emotions while standing on the stage in front of an entire crowd. There were a few particularly emotional moments, in which cast members supported each other with tissues and rubbing each others’ backs.

One particular moment occurred when a cast member allowed herself to tell the audience the shame she felt as a child, knowing that her father had not gone to college, and was a late-night construction worker. While she first felt that he must not have been intelligent enough to gain a higher education, she came to learn as she got older that he was unable to afford college as a non-white American. Each time a cast member struggled through tears to complete her monologue, the audience’s silence was shocking; it was as if the individual cast members and audience members were engaging in a one-on-one conversation. The only sounds that could be heard at this time were sniffles from the crowd, mirroring the tears of the cast members.

The night ended with the women explaining that they were self-proclaimed ambassadors between minority groups and whites. They say they don’t choose to be in them, but were put in these socially-constructed boxes by others, who have further perpetrated these stereotypes. They all have been oppressed, and they all stand against it together in an effort to allow women of color to be seen as more than their appearance.

According to a press release, Body Politics 2010 was supported in part by the Native American Student Association, the Amherst Cultural Council, MotherWoman and Student Affairs ECSA grant.

Elyse Horowitz can be reached at [email protected].

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