Ntozake Shange

A performance artist, poet, musician, writer, and politician, whose life and works give clarification and direction to the current feminist movement.

The choreopoem 'for Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide/when the Rainbow is Enuf' is Shange's piece of success in which she characterizes the black female experiences in America with a blend of music, drama and poetry.

October 18th, 1948 Ntozake Shange was born under the name of Paulette Williams. In her early years, she took violin and dancing lessons and was exposed to all sorts of artistic activities, of which many were brought into the house by famous black men, visiting Shange's parents. She went to a non-segregated school in St. Louis, where she became witness and the victim of extreme harassment by white children.
These experiences forced her to lead a double life:
she was struggling with her color while trying to fit into the white societal parameters in which she was placed.

Her Undergraduate years she spent at Barnard College during which she kept her "all-American" upbringing, behaving herself, keeping her virginity, and eventually marrying a lawyer. However, after the lawyer left Shange, she began to have bouts of suicidal tendencies.

In 1970 she finished her undergrad and moved to Los Angeles to attend the University of Southern California. Here, Shange held a teaching fellowship while pursuing her master degree in American Studies.

In 1971, Paulette Williams decided to change her "slave name" to an African name, claiming: "I have a violent resentment of carrying a slave name; poems and music come from the pit of myself, and the pit of myself isn't a slave. Ntozake Shange means, "she who comes with her own things" and "who walks like a lion", respectively.

In 1974, Shange began to write a series of poems, which became part of the choreopoem 'for Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide/when the Rainbow is Enuf'.
During the time 'for Colored Girls...' was on Broadway (1976-1978), Shange received several prestigious awards: the Obie Award, the Golden Apple Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award, as well as nominations for Emmy, Tony and Grammy awards. She also received the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Medal of Excellence from the Columbia University.

Shange continued to produce plays and choreopoems, in addition to teaching drama and creative writing at several universities, including Yale and Howard.

In 1981 the dramatic trilogy Three Pieces (which include Boogie Woogie Landscape) was published, winning Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry.
That year Shange also received an Obie for her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and her Children.

Shange has also published several collections of poetry, including Nappy Edges (1978), fifty poems celebrating the voices of defiantly self-sufficient women, and From Okra to Greens: Poems (1984).

Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo: A novel (1982) combines narrative, poetry, magic, spells, recipes, and letters to tell the story of three sisters and their relationships with men.

Betsy Brown: A novel (1985) is the story of a young girl growing up in St. Louis in the 1950s.

The Love Space Demands: A continuing Saga (1991) marked a return to the choreopoem form of for colored girls.

Shange's third novel, Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter (1994) relates to the life of the title character, an artist, from her lover's perspectives.

In 1983, she became associate professor of drama at the University of Houston.

Overall, until today, she has published two theater pieces, four books of poetry, and three works of fiction.

For more information about Shange and online poems look under

archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/aloud/ntozake.htm