Shange, Ntozake << SHONG gay, ehn toh ZAH kee >> (1948-2018), was an African American author known for her imaginative works for the stage. She became best known for the play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf (1976). The work blends dialogue and dance to describe the experiences of seven African American women. Shange performed one of the roles during the show’s run in New York City.
Paulette Williams was born in Trenton, New Jersey, on Oct. 18, 1948. She graduated with honors from Barnard College in 1970 and earned an M.A. degree in American studies at the University of Southern California in 1973. In 1971, she changed her name to Ntozake Shange, from the Zulu Xhosa dialect, to celebrate her African heritage. She began reading her poems in San Francisco bars. Dancer Paula Moss joined her and choreographed (designed) dances to accompany Shange’s readings. They moved to New York City, where they continued their performances.
Shange’s Spell #7 (1979) combines poetry, song, dance, and masks. Her other works for the stage include A Photograph: Lovers in Motion (1979), Boogie Woogie Landscapes (1979), Mouths (1981), Bocas (1982), and Three Views of Mt. Fuji (1987). She also adapted the historical play Mother Courage and Her Children by the German playwright Bertolt Brecht in 1980. Shange collaborated with Emily Mann and Baikida Carroll on Betsey Brown (1991), a rhythm and blues musical based on Shange’s 1985 novel of the same name.
Shange’s nontheatrical writings include the novels Sassafrass (1976), Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), and Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter (1994). With Ifa Bayeza, her sister, Shange wrote Some Sing, Some Cry (2010). The novel is a chronicle of African American history told through the voices of seven generations of Black women from a single family.
Shange’s poems have been collected in National Disasters and Other Festive Occasions (1977), nappy edges (1977), A Daughter’s Geography (1983), from okra to greens (1984), The Love Space Demands (1991), I Live in Music (1994), We Troubled the Waters (2009), and Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems (2017). She also wrote a collection of children’s poems about the escape of enslaved people on the underground railroad, Freedom’s a-Callin Me (illustrated by Rod Brown, 2012).
Nonfiction pieces written by Shange have been published in See No Evil: Prefaces, Essays and Accounts 1976-1983 (1984) and Ridin’ the Moon in Texas (1987). Ellington Was Not a Street (2004) is a nonfiction book for children. It pays tribute to a group of African American men and their contributions to world culture in the 1900’s. Coretta Scott (2009) is a picture-book biography of the civil rights leader Coretta Scott King.
Shange died on Oct. 27, 2018. Dance We Do: A Poet Explores Black Dance was published posthumously in 2020. This book by Shange explores dance through her essays and interviews with dancers and choreographers.
