African-American Writer Ntozake Shange

Writer Ntozake Shange actually attempted suicide prior to writing her award winning play.

Her name at birth was Paulette L. Williams. With the new name came a new life.

Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother was an educator and a psychiatric social worker. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, Shange and her family moved to St. Louis when she was eight years old. Shange was bussed to an all-white school as a result of the Brown v. Board of Education court decision. Even though the decision was made with good intentions, Shange suffered abuse at the hands of racists.

She was, however, privy to meeting a number of influential African-Americans while living in St. Louis. It was not unheard for the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry, Miles Davis, Josephine Baker and W.E.B. DuBois to visit her family in their home as they were all friends of her parents.

She completed high school in New Jersey and enrolled at Barnard College. She earned a degree in American Studies at Barnard, then a Master's degree at the University of Southern California.

But Shange made the mistake of marrying too young while she was still in college. The marriage didn't last long and the ensuing divorce left Shange depressed and feeling alienated.

Shange made a number of attempts to end her own life. Although it is not clear how Shange overcame her challenges, her decision to change her name in 1971 must have been the result of her triumph. Ntozake means "she who comes with her own things" or "things that belong to her" and Shange means "she who walks with lions."

Shange taught humanities and women's studies at Mills College in Oakland and Sonoma State College. Her interaction with other creative people nurtured her own talents. She began performing her poetry along with other talented friends around the San Francisco area, even dancing with Halifu Osumare's company for a time.

Around that time she also began a collaboration with Paula Moss on some of the elements that would be featured in "For Colored Girls..." including poetry, music and dance.

With her new name and, apparently, a new outlook, Shange moved to New York City. In the year 1975 "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" was produced off-Broadway. It didn't' take long for the play to move to Broadway itself at the Booth Theatre. The play won numerous awards including an Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award. The play was also received nominations for a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy.

The play was a twenty-part poem chronicling the lives of black women. After the poem was performed as a theatre piece, it was published in book form in 1977 and reprinted by Scribner in 1997.

Another of Shange's works won an Obie Award: her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children" in 1980.

Shange's list of published works is long and honorable.

"Betsey Brown" (Turtleback Books, 2002) is about a teenaged black girl struggling with issues of integration. "Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo" (Picador, First American Edition, 1996) follows the lives of three friends of those names. Sassafras weaves tapestries, Cypress dances, Indigo makes magnificent dolls and plays a wild violin.[1]

Shange has taught at a number of colleges and universities including Yale, New York University, California State College and Rice University. In addition to receiving Obie awards, she is also the recipient of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry and a Pushcart Prize.

Sources:

[1] Amazon.com, From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Kirsten Backstrom
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