She then joins an African American dance troupe but does not make enough money to pay the bills. She abandons ballet out of frustration with its rigid rules and cultural insignificance. Cypress's portion of the story centers on her attempts to find her niche in the dancing world. Under Cypress's guidance and influence, Sassafrass seeks wholeness in writing and, like her sister, in dance.
This puts her in close proximity to her younger sister Cypress, who has moved to San Francisco to pursue a career in dance. Instead, she moves to San Francisco after growing fed up with Mitch's abuse. She knows of an artists' colony in New Orleans and longs to move there but does not yet possess the determination to make such a change a reality. A talented fiber artist, she lives with a fledgling and volatile saxophone player named Mitch and struggles to find the time and community necessary to nurture her art. The next section focuses on Sassafrass, years later, in Los Angeles. By the end of the section, recipes appear as the family gets ready for the impending Christmas season, which sees the return of Indigo's older sisters, Sassafrass and Cypress, from their schools up north. Throughout this section, Indigo shares her thoughts through "cartographies," little manifestos of magic and memory. She teaches herself how to play, and her music triggers a strong response from two local boys, Spats and Crunch, who initiate her into their club, called the Junior Geechee Captains.
One day, Indigo gets her period, and shortly afterward, her Uncle John gives her a fiddle.
These dolls have been lovingly made by hand, and each one has a specific name and accompanying personality a deeply spiritual sense of make-believe permeates Indigo's entire life. The book opens in Charleston, South Carolina, as the family's youngest daughter, Indigo, plays with her dolls. The legacy of the women's Gullah ancestry and the memory of Daddy-the girls' father and Hilda's husband-also inform each of their movements through the world and their quests for identity and self-actualization. Because master weavers are part of the family's heritage, Shange creates a layered narrative that shifts in perspective among the principal characters, interwoven with correspondence, dreams, diary entries, recipes, and spells. Taking place primarily in the 1960s and 1970s, it is the story of three African American sisters-Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo-and their mother, Hilda Effania, as they each embark on their respective journeys toward fulfillment and empowerment. Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is a novel by American author and playwright Ntozake Shange, first published by St.
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