AFAS 342 Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo essay, review, summary

Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo, named for Hilda Effania’s daughter’s and written by Ntozake Shange focuses on the three daughters coming into a sense of self both in the real and spiritual world through the use of creative expression. Naming her daughters for three different trees used as different dyes, the first example of creative expression comes from Hilda Effania, who uses weaving as a metaphor for weaving her daughters into one another and into the past. Throughout the book Indigo refers to “the slaves who are ourselves” (224 Shange) several times, referring to Hilda Effania guiding each of her daughters towards creative expression as a way of connecting with themselves and with their African American history. Indigo connects with the slaves who were allowed only to use a fiddle through her violin music, Cypress connects to the dancing of aboriginals through her relationship with Leroy, and Sassafras finds healing and freedom by thinking of the many colored women around the world who used healing as a form of art and expression.

The novel begins with and mostly focuses on the story of the youngest daughter, Indigo, who begins the novel living in her own spiritual world of magic by making and talking to several dolls in the context of her loneliness of being the youngest daughter. Through the process of beginning to play the violin in her own, unconventional way to learning to play classical violin she is able to translate her unseen world of childlike imagination to a world in which she can live in. Uncle John, the man who originally gave her the violin, expresses this sentiment in convincing her to play the fiddle, “You and me, we aint the onliest ones talkin’ wit the unreal. What ya think music is? Whatchu think the blues be and them get happy church musics is about, but talkin’ wit the unreal that’s mo’ real than most folks is ever gonna know.” (47 Shange). In addition to learning classical music as a way of separating the real world with the spiritual world, her menstruation symbolizes a transformation and maturing both in body, mind, and art that enthralls the boys from the gang and heals an old man. Many times she is described as having the “South” within her, being the most connected to the spiritual world and by becoming a midwife she is further able to transcend her music and connect to “the slaves who are ourselves.” (224 Shange).

As for Sassafrass, she does not come as naturally into her art as her sisters, struggling between writing, weaving, and her lover Mitch. She is also able to find the most healing through her art, after living with the abusive and degrading Mitch who, while encouraging her to do art, is ironically the one who holds her back, “Look, Sassafrass, I just want you to be happy with yourself. You want to write and create new images for black folks, and you’re always sittin’ around making things with your hands… Now Sassafrass, get into yourself and find out what’s holding you back.” (79). He devalues her weaving when it is the weaving, her mother's craft, that she is able to find her creative expression and healing going from a place where she could only focus on Mitch, “Sassafrass caught herself focusing again on Mitch instead of herself, because she did want to be perfected for him, like her was creating all the time.” (128 Shange) Even though she returns to him time and time again, she is able to find healing through weaving and even bring “a free child” into the world.

Cypress is easily seen as the most connected to her form of artistic expression, dancing, from when she was a child up into adulthood, “Dancing was in her blood...every step” (135). Because she is the most connected to her form of art, she also reflects her life transformations through different forms of dance. Beginning with an obsession with ballet, she is obsessed with being perfect, even better than the white ballet dancers, going so far as to severely restrict her diet. As she embraces a more alternative lifestyle so too does her art transform as she strays further from her mother's ideals of what she should be dancing. Joining the lesbian separatist dance group her dancing transforms to being experimental and representational. After leaving this group and breaking up with Idrina Cypress decides to get married to Leroy. Leroy is when she is able to truly connect to her dancing, as Shange describes their sex to an aboriginal dance, connecting her to their ancestors,  and they agree to marry.