“a metaphysical dilemma”: The Language of Black Female Subjectivity in the Poetics of Ntozake Shange

2nd Place Winner of the Hesburgh Library's Capstone Project or Senior Thesis Award. This project investigates the metaphysical and discursive formation of Black female subjectivity through the poetics of Ntozake Shange, particularly in her choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf. Drawing from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hortense Spillers’s Black discourse theory, and the aesthetics of the Black Arts Movement, Chloe Miller explores how Black women’s interiority is historically silenced by what Spillers calls the “American Grammar”—a colonial linguistic order that renders Black women voiceless and dehumanized. Through close textual analysis of unpublished drafts and archival materials, the project argues that Shange’s formal innovations—her use of African American vernacular, her manipulation of English syntax, and her invention of the choreopoem—offer a radical method for restoring voice and subjectivity to Black women.

Miller posits a theory of "Black female discourse" that foregrounds interior intersubjectivity: a relational, reflective mode of becoming rooted in self-recognition and communal care. This framework enables a new understanding of how Black women can reclaim agency, resist the symbolic violence of imposed identity, and “sing a Black girl’s song.” The project culminates in the recognition of the Black woman as “the One,” a subject who emerges not from external validation but through self-reflective speech and collective affirmation. By weaving critical theory, archival research, and poetic analysis, Miller crafts a powerful vision for epistemic decolonization and the reconstitution of Black female subjectivity.