On October 27, 2018 iconic playwright, author, and cultural influencer passed away. Ntozake Shange’s obituary acknowledged her cultural contributions.
Ntozake Shange, an award-winning African-American author whose choreopoem in 1976 “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf” received an Obie Award and a Tony Award nomination, died at the age of 70 on October 27, 2018.
Influenced by personal occasions, consisting of Ms. Shange’s numerous efforts to take her own life, the choreopoem combines uttered words, dance and music to narrate the story of seven Black ladies, each defined solely by their color (Ms. Shange herself played the Lady in Orange). The piece intends to discover the abuse, abandonment, and violence that women of color face by eventually uniting the seven women in “a laying on of hands.”
In 1973 after finishing her studies, Ms. Shange went back to the east coast to New York, New York, having previously shown the earlier versions of for colored girls … in California. The play debuted at Stage’s Public Theater in June 1976, following a performance in NoHo jazz loft Studio Rivbea. The play launched months later at the Cubicle Theater on Broadway, where it played 742 performances. Following Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, it was the second black female play to be staged on Broadway.
Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton, New Jersey in 1948. She attended the (USC) University of Southern California and Barnard College. She changed her name to Ntozake Shange, the Zulu name by which we know and love her, 2 years before graduating from USC with a Masters in American Research Studies. Ntozake means: “she who comes with her own things” and Shange means “who walks like a lion”. “As a feminist, I think it was ridiculous to be named after a boy,” Ms. Shange stated at 1984 interview with The New York Times
The literary works of Ntozake Shange are as diverse as they are iconic, her oeuvre includes plays, poems, novels, and more. Her works do have a common theme of describing the hardships and successes of black women and illuminating their humanity in artistic and emotional ways. Ntozake Shange’s obituary shows how her works are focused on addressing issues relating to race. The stories of black women take center stage in her oeuvre, and recount the experiences of little black girls and their struggles and journeys towards liberation as they mature into black women – and they frequently challenge the traditions of conventional, its style is influenced by White-Dominated Western Culture.
Ms. Shange received the Obie Award for the play in 1976, and Tony Award nomination for Finest Play. In 1982, the play was adapted for PBS’s American Playhouse television series, and a Tyler Perry film adaptation in 2010 starred Whoopi Goldberg, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, and Janet Jackson. LaChanze, Adriane Lenox, Tonya Pinkins, Lillias White, and original cast member Trazana Beverley participated in a 40th anniversary presentation in the year 2014.
This Ntozake Shange’s obituary acknowledges her works as well as her awards. Her next works were Spell No. 7 and an adaptation of Mother Courage and Her Children, which were both produced at Public Theater, and the latter garnered her another Obie Award in 1981. The poems Nappy Edges and The Sugary Food Breath of Life, as well as the books Betsey Brown and Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, were among her other works.
In 2016, Ms. Shange’s archives were acquired by Barnard, which comprised individual pictures, artwork, and writings. “I feel as though I came of age as a feminist and an artist at Barnard,” she said. “I got all that I ever imagined from an all-women’s college, and I thought my archives belonged here.”
Here is a list of the media outlets that acknowledged her contributions to the culture: