Rediscover: Ntozake Shange

Author, poet and playwright Ntozake Shange, who died on October 27 at age 70, was best known for her 1975 Tony Award-nominated play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, which uses poetry, music and movement to explore the many struggles of black women in America. Shange was the first to call this multimedia mix a "choreopoem." It features seven women, nameless save for the colors they wear, addressing topics like abortion, rape and domestic violence. Shange's work was first staged off Broadway, but eventually became the second play by a black woman to reach Broadway (after Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in 1959). In 2010, Shange updated for colored girls... with the poem "positive," about the Iraq War and PTSD.

In addition to 15 plays, Shange published 19 poetry collections, six novels, five children's books and three essay collections. Her work includes Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems (2017); lost in language & sound: or how i found my way to the arts: essays (2011); Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo (1982); Some Sing, Some Cry; I Live in Music (1994); and The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family (2004).

Shange's sister, playwright Ifa Bayeza, described Shange's death as "a huge loss for the world. I don't think there's a day on the planet when there's not a young woman who discovers herself through the words of my sister." --Tobias Mutter

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