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Ntozake Shange is a poet, playwright, writer, and performance artist who has won numerous awards. The work of Ntozake Shange has been widely anthologized and performed around the world. Her revolutionary work, which is focused on modern black women’s experiences, has solidified her status as a major American feminist and literary personality.

Shange has authored numerous essays regarding the experiences of various racial and ethnic groups, as well as offering her ideas on art, feminism, and music, to complement her triumphs in playwriting, poetry, and novels. She’s also the author of four children’s novels.

Now, I have listed here the most renowned works of Ntozake Shange that you should give time to read and ponder.

1. For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf : a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange( Book )

Ntozake Shange’s earliest and most acclaimed theater play, for colored females who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, opened in 1976. It consists of a sequence of literary monologues complemented with dancing and music, a genre Shange dubbed the choreopoem. relates the experiences of seven women who have been oppressed in a racist and sexist culture. It has 90 editions published between 1975 and 2014 in 3 languages.

This is a work inspired by Shange’s personal experiences. Shange has admitted to attempting suicide four times in public. She explained how she came up with the title of her choreopoem in a phone interview with CNN: “I was driving the No. 1 Highway in northern California and I was overcome by the appearance of two parallel rainbows. I had a feeling of near death or near catastrophe. Then I drove through the rainbow and I went away. Then I put that together to form the title.”

Shange also notes that she chose the word “colored” in the title of her choreopoem to make her choreopoem more inclusive.

 

2. Betsey Brown : a novel by Ntozake Shange( Book )

The narrative of Betsey Brown, a thirteen-year-old colored girl caught between childhood and adulthood. Set in St. Louis’ colored community in 1959, the year that school integration wreaked havoc on everyone’s lives, the story follows the pressure paths formed throughout black families by not only the racial prejudice and trial integration, but also by class division and cultural estrangement within the black community.

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Ntozake Shange was an African-American dramatist, poet, and feminist who lived from 1948 to 2018. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enough, her 1975 Obie Award-winning choreopoem, is best remembered. Ntozake Shange, a brave and unapologetic performer, has a number of uplifting and empowering statements.
Below are 5 motivational quotes from Shange’s writings and beyond that will have you quickly adding everything she penned to your library.

1. “Where there is a woman, there is magic.”
— Ntozake Shange
“Where there is a woman, there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers.” A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs, and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.”
Quotes from Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo (1982)

 

2. “I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.”
— Ntozake Shange

From an interview with Rebecca Carroll for Mother Jones

 

3. But being alive & being a woman & being colored is a metaphysical dilemma/I haven’t conquered yet/ do you see the point? My spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to be thrown back on my face”
— Ntozake Shange

Quotes from for Colored Girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

4. “I’m committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive … The kind of esteem that’s given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.”

From an interview

5. “We need a god who bleeds now/ whose wounds are not the end of anything.”

Qoutes from Okra to Greens: Poems

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Ntozake Shange’s Nappy Edges contains essays and poetry about racism, love, loneliness, violence against women, and women’s own being. It is written from Ntozakes’ heartfelt and devastating direct view of her body, life, and the world.

Nappy Edges is Shange’s third book and is divided into five elements of poetry and prose. While each part of the volume is unique, the poems all speak to one another and cover similar topics.

How do we distinguish between racism and sexism? Is the only difference between us, as women, and blacks, as victims of the former? Or are there deeper differences?

In Ntozake Shange’s Nappy Edges, it depicts several aspects of racism and misogyny. As previously said, this work contains themes of love as well as topics concerning loneliness. She demonstrates the bigotry that her people faced at the time and still face today. She decided to write a book on some of her fellow black women who had encountered both racism and sexism. Unconscious bias training, according to Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, is contentious because it implies that “America is entrenched in the toxic and inaccurate assumption that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist culture.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. initiated the civil rights movement in 1955 because America has yet to evolve into an equitable nation, it has never ceased. Women and people of color continue to fight for equal rights and opportunities.

The issue with some people in this world is that they are unconcerned about how you feel or will feel if your human rights are taken away from you. For someone who is black and endures both racism and sexism, it must be quite difficult.

Ntozake Shange’s Nappy Edges earned great reviews and appreciation from reviewers. The fundamental themes of nappy edges can all be traced back to black women’s complex lives and identities.

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