| Seo, Haeryen. “Searching for ‘New’ Black Masculinity: Reading Shange’s From Okra to Greens.” Studies in English Language & Literature 48.2 (2022): 67-86. This study aims to investigate ‘new’ black masculinity by focusing on Okra and Greens’ connubial relationships in Shange’s From Okra to Greens / A Different Kinda Love Story. As a poet, and playwright and performance artist ntozake shange wrote about the various experiences of racial and sexual discrimination of black women as well as cementing the views on black feminism, literature and art music. The salient traits of the black men in shange’s poems are often focused on physical assault, verbal abuse, beguilement and fecklessness towards female characters. Yet a closer look at and reading of black male characters in shange’s later poems in From Okra to Greens shows that shange reserves sympathy for the black man. She redefines manhood as gentleness, emotional vulnerability and sensitivity in these poems. Sexually and romantically involved with a black woman, Okra, Greens as a black man understands the black woman’s particular oppression. They are able to work together as a black couple against racist society that victimizes both of them through this kind of understanding. (Woosuk University) |