She wrote for all of us. For the creatives, the charismatics, the downtrodden, the cast-aside, the lovers, the dancers, the feelers, the healers. She wrote to anyone who has ever felt anything that made them feel like jumping up outta their bones.

With the 50th anniversary of the first Broadway production of for colored girls who have considered suicide /when the rainbow is enuf upcoming this year, I am honored to reflect on the legacy of my aunt, Ntozake Shange.

I was decades from existence when this work of art started to take shape. In New York apartments and Berkeley basements, in dialogue with her sister, Ifa Bayeza, a talented playwright in her own right, in dance improvisation with her beloved teacher, Diane McIntyre, and most crucially, in the intricate contours of Shange’s internal mind. It was her capacity for deep intellectual thought and her unyielding willingness to look at humanity with precision that made her a powerful storyteller. With each word, phase, rhythm, image, syncopated sound–she leaves us with something to think about/see/feel.

for colored girls came to Broadway in September 1976, making it only the second play by a Black woman to reach this milestone, after Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in 1959. I was born 21 years later in the city that is the backdrop for the original play: New York, New York. In the 1970s New York was gritty, menacing and electric at the same time (or, so I hear). There is something about the friction New York creates that allows for Shange’s characters to weave together – you do simply bump into people, and into tragedy, dancing, the funniest joke you’ve ever heard and the craziest person you’ve ever seen – all in a six block radius. And yet, it is both of significance and none at all that the play is set in 1970’s New York City.

Shange wrote both of a place and  beyond the confines of place. When the lady in blue tells us

“i usedta live in the world, and now I live in Harlem,” she referencing a physical universe, a place, where we are all ‘trapped’ and the metaphorical box many survivors of violence feel they live within—one in which they are not free.

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Women’s history month is a time to acknowledge and celebrate the triumph and achievement of women of all backgrounds and from all fields, especially those who left us stronger, wiser and more resilient.

In the sphere of Broadway theater, I want to lift up two amazing and history-making Black women writers: Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange.

Lorraine Hansberry, born on May 19, 1930, was the author of the first play written by a Black woman to reach the Broadway stage. A Raisin in the Sun, her most celebrated work, debuted on March 11, 1959, when Hansberry was 28 years of age. The work reflected her strong personal commitment to social justice, perhaps inspired by her father who waged a landmark housing desegregation case in her hometown of Chicago in 1937. Hansberry saw art as a tool for social change and, although her life was tragically cut short at age 32 by pancreatic cancer, her commentary on American life as an artist remains poignant and insightful.

Ntozake Shange, born on October 18, 1948, is best known for her seminal play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and the birth of a new theatrical art form, the choreopoem. As a child, Shange, was among the first Black students to integrate public schools in St. Louis, MO in the Fifties and the first Black student in Trenton, NJ to desegregate the advanced curriculum classes at the local public high school in the Sixties. Harkening Hansberry’s experience, Shange’s father, a general surgeon, had to institute a lawsuit in Trenton to gain admitting privileges at one of the local hospitals.

By high school, Shange started to show an interest in poetry and writing that would ultimately steer her into a life long career as a poet, playwright, essayist, performer and novelist. Her writing was personal, emotional and, similar to Hansberry’s work, steeped in her rich knowledge and understanding of place, history and people.

Seventeen years after Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Shange’s for colored girls hit the Broadway stage on Sept. 15, 1976. Her work was the second play by a Black writer to reach such lofty heights. Shange was then just 27 years of age.

Shange’s for colored girls exploded into the culture baring topics that until then had only been spoken about in hushed tones or behind closed doors.

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