Christopher X. Shade’s cut-up story, Shir in Holyland, will be made available as a free, printed booklet during the Season 1: Migration show on Saturday, June 18. This blog post explains his cut-up technique and provides a window for readers into the material sources used.
Shade first chose three books from his own shelves: The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Call It Sleep by Henry Roth, and Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta. He then selected three pages, one from each of the three books. He cut the text of those pages into small fragments, rearranged all the fragments, and allowed the fragments along with Stefan Hengst’s photographs to inspire a new story.
Shade chose three photographs from Stefan Hengst’s year-long project, My Daily Poetry Fix. Stefan Hengst’s photographs initiated not only Shade’s new work, but each H5 artist’s work in this first installment of 5 Artists | 5 Phases. Shade selected the following three photographs by Stefan Hengst. Accompanying each is a snippet of story text in which Shade incorporated a reference to these photographs:
Once Shade cut up the fragments, mixed them up, and then arranged them in their new order, he typed up the fragmented text. Here are the fragments:
She saw that she had to share Wuz way out over St. Jame’s Parochial on “Dat one’s on’y two cents. Ev’y night, an’ dat’s w’y she and showed them into a room reached in and drew out what had her appendixitis cut out “Crosses is holy.” In the evening stairs down, in the yard;
Losing you to America. Well, what could she say? squinted at the distant roofs with a single bed West Indians buy her a top coat with I give you a slab so shiny red it’s who comes in with her white You have your children She said nothing like a yell Twelft’ an’ Avenee C “No.” He was relieved
“Yuh see dis?” an’ den it went an’ busted. They all came to welcome her. The type she had had Angry an’ yuh’ll never hit bottom even her shoes “Sorry, but I was too busy In a 49ers jacket a hall with flowered walls! Some cracked wheat his father shouted “All that and the only houses Butcha gota git a lodda
when he said “prom” running in impatient “Well, I know you will “She can’t.” Jews never buys nutt’n even her smile the Pakistanis the other tenants when he knew that his wife returned from the factories of sesame candy ready to take off “Not funny we can get are horrors like to make a dalia pudding for
in turn held her Leo’s voice was nettled cord wid it, er ye can’t fly it “Why yuh god id?” you can keep to yourself with money saved up drinking whiskey-beer fragrance, the same brand “Sure, even if yuh wears ‘em
got twissed on de roofs always cross meself t’ree times for something to fill in still live apart from black people with children Mysore sandalwood soap Dey ain’ dere now, doze madam at home as her paid servants a senior at Ridgefield High
Francis did not make but still, in Nigeria, class how could you have done this to us? Yuh c’n see de cross–see it? because they need me the delicious tears
Any comment one o ‘dem under her piller look after of bajra atta for ‘I don’t have to see them’ Don’ worry! Fer deyr kids.
I didn’t mean! David gazed out at the distant It’s not bad “Are we going to live here?” to shoot some hoops It was narrow and it seemed
Love in your father’s voice spire outlined against the house with such “Aunty today is ekadasi Leo instructed him severely “but I ain’ gonna let it
Manu who is seventeen eleventh day of the I had a big kite oncet she had had a terrible childhood searched the horizon the settee and the bed
When me ol’ lady Everybody is coming to London “Oh! (Savior? What?) together with them that there was no cleaning bathrooms After all we
Dey bring yuh luck ‘em. Christ, our Savior, died made with sweet Francis opened one door the ones whom I need She simply stared. The space between distinctions were beginning was just enough in his uncle’s motel
Until they seemed to be in London, expecially for Dere jis layin’ low an’ it busted wid even all colourds micks,” he ventured wailed inwardly that the toilet was outside Nigerians who called her from them to the
Johnny-high-dive all yuh wants was coming with their daughter even when she learned you don’t have to see them! You could have tried methi, my hsband is that rise to your eyes made sure he moved away approaching the roof
And look, look, not like it, but this is the hazy western blue “Funny?” must not eat rice. So where he would land if only he knew but it was against cheap
His mother before he goes he undid a with the money Adah sent him to As if to clinch his argument Here’s kumkum powder behind them as they leave settee which Francis had bought
Moon, and my mother-in-law might as well pick up mother in fear. You don’t have to mix she managed to ask. But already they are that he bought There was no need. “I mean w’y yuh god id?”
Like a tunnel. And as long as I wa here. Is very short to be established. Where they worked. Molasses starched and shiney It was very small I thought maybe you used to
Looked like a square piece of leather how fine it is. You see, accommodation with its calm bright what do you need today? Inside furious “Kentcha fly wit’ cotton?”
The best I can do. “Wot’s funny about on a string red cord. Have let me share their joy already I am turning thanks that they “You make it all sound so easy
I didn’t know.” There were no windows. We are all blacks much cost a kite? Into what he looked “Chees! As dis one–an’ wot a pull on it and even the Indians
She swallowed it all to put on our foreheads for married How luck. The awkward pause gur to slow you down you watch” He the same educational background He was quick to mollify button on his shirt at first as if
Nurse’s uniform I send a blessing “Yea.” That the topic had changed. They climbed stairs upon stairs four flights of for a formica-topped table and dancing pressed up poised tiptoe fading from my mind Ah life,
So fond of methi parathas American girls in miniskirts of a hibiscus flower –didn’tcha know dat?” so that African just enough to hear when we were newlyweds some of them were of nor when she learned bath and no kitchen so many years ago thinking Not fair not fair what are you thinking of.”
With them. Students are usually grouped fluorescent Nike shoes have friends who And when David looked blank. “Wuz full o’ messages thought they may be living in slums horror a whisper of “Naw! It busts. Others. –twicet as big on one o’d dem.” Opened the door
To pick up a sack being a widow this type of people in the kitchen in Lagos. She knew fair. Buy me in India at school just like a nasty pill a hall; some of your nearly all me cord too– red as the heart
During the writing process, Shade allowed the fragments along with the photographs to steer the story. Shade only used a portion of the total fragments. Some fragments were skipped as Shade wrote the story, but most of them were used, many of them without any adjustment to the fragment’s phrasing. As the reader may notice, Shade worked through the set of fragments until he felt the story was complete. He stopped working with the fragments when he reached these three, which appear in the last line of the story: “The space between distinctions were beginning was just enough”.
[Article originally appeared on the 5 Artists | 5 Phases website.]
Christopher X. Shade 