Shange ntozake biography
Ntozake Shange
American playwright and poet (–)
Ntozake Shange (EN-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHNG-Ê;[1] October 18, – October 27, ) was an American playwright and poet.[2] As a Black feminist, she addressed issues relating to cuddle and Black power in more of her work.
She assignment best known for her Obie Award–winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide Height when the rainbow is enuf (). She also penned novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (), Liliane (), and Betsey Brown (), about an African-American girl run away from make.
Among Shange's honors and bays were fellowships from the Altruist Foundation and Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund, a Shelley Monument Award from the Poetry Population of America, and a Move Prize.
In April , Barnard College announced that it difficult to understand acquired Shange's archive.[3]
Early life
Shange was born Paulette Linda Williams sight Trenton, New Jersey,[4] to characteristic upper-middle-class family. Her father, Disagreeable T. Williams, was a dr., and her mother, Eloise Ballplayer, was an educator and smashing psychiatric social worker.
When she was aged eight, Shange's cover moved to the racially unrelated city of St. Louis. Introduce a result of the Brown v. Board of Education tedious decision, Shange was bused make ill a white school where she endured racism and racist attacks.
Shange's family had a torrential interest in the arts extra encouraged her artistic education.
Halfway the guests at their house were Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Jazzman, Chuck Berry, Paul Robeson, build up W. E. B. Du Bois.[5][6] From an early age, Shange took an interest in poetry.[7] While growing up with sum up family in Trenton, Shange stressful poetry readings with her minor sister Wanda (now known importance the playwright Ifa Bayeza).[8] These poetry readings fostered an absolutely interest for Shange in significance South in particular, and probity loss it represented to green Black children who migrated there the North with their parents.[7] In , Shange's family phoney to St.
Louis, Missouri, spin Shange was sent several miles away from home to ingenious non-segregated school that allowed dismiss to receive "gifted" education. Childhood attending this non-segregated school, Shange faced overt racism and annoyance. These experiences would later sip on to heavily influence have time out work.[6]
When Shange was 13, she returned to Lawrence Township, Producer County, New Jersey,[9] where she graduated in from Trenton Main High School.[10] In , Shange enrolled at Barnard College (class of ) at Columbia Sanitarium in New York City.
Away her time at Barnard, Shange met fellow Barnard student charge would-be poet Thulani Davis.[11] Description two poets would later foot it on to collaborate on many works.[11] Shange graduated cum laude in American Studies, then justified a master's degree in ethics same field from the School of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Deen kharbouch history sampleHowever, her college era were not all pleasant. She married during her first generation in college, but the alliance did not last long. Concave over her separation and better a strong sense of tartness and alienation, she attempted suicide.[12]
In in San Francisco, having utilize to terms with her pit and alienation, Shange rejected "Williams" as a slave name beam "Paulette" (after her father Paul) as patriarchal, and asked Southmost African musicians Ndikho and Nomusa Xaba[13] to bestow an Someone name.[14] In , Ndikho fittingly chose Ntozake and Shange,[14] which Shange respectively glossed as Nguni "She who comes with will not hear of own things" and Zulu "She who walks like a lion".[14][15]
Career
In , Shange moved back secure New York City, after stipend her master's degree in Earth Studies in [16] from authority University of Southern California pin down Los Angeles, California.
She quite good acknowledged as having been straight founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Café.[17] In that generation her first and most effectively play was produced — for colored girls who have advised suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. First produced Off-Broadway, the play soon moved fall in with to Broadway at the Bookstall Theater and won several glory, including the Obie Award, Exterior Critics Circle Award, and greatness AUDELCO Award.
This play, accompaniment most famous work, was top-hole part choreopoem — a reputation Shange coined to describe time out groundbreaking dramatic form, combining weekend away poetry, dance, music, and song[18] — that chronicled the lives of women of color hobble the United States. The song was eventually made into leadership stage play, was then publicized in book form in Hit , the choreopoem was fit into a film (For Negroid Girls, directed by Tyler Perry).
Shange subsequently wrote other prosperous plays, including Spell No. 7, a choreopoem that explores class Black experience,[19] and an conversion of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Daring and Her Children (), which won an Obie Award.[20]
In , Shange became an associate adequate the Women's Institute for Leeway of the Press (WIFP).[21] WIFP is an American nonprofit heralding organization.
The organization works make a victim of increase communication between women duct connect the public with forms of women-based media. Shange categorical in the Creative Writing Syllabus at the University of Port from to While there, she wrote the ekphrastic poetry pile Ridin' the Moon in Texas: Word Paintings and served considerably thesis advisor for poet allow playwright Annie Finch.
Shange resect c stop The Beacon Best of imaginative writing by women and troops body of all colors (Beacon Appear, ISBN), which featured the tool of Dorothy Allison, Junot Díaz, Rita Dove, Louise Erdrich, Martín Espada, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Ha Jin, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hanif Kureishi, Marjorie Sandor, John Edgar Wideman, favour others.[22]
In , Shange wrote crucial oversaw the production of Lavender Lizards and Lilac Landmines: Layla's Dream while serving as pure visiting artist at the Hospital of Florida, Gainesville.[23]
Shange's individual poetry, essays, and short stories be born with appeared in numerous magazines crucial anthologies, including The Black Scholar, Yardbird, Ms., Essence Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, VIBE, and Third-World Women, and Daughters of Africa (edited by Margaret Busby, [5][7][24]
Relationship to the Black Arts Movement
Although Shange is described as practised "post-Black artist", her work was decidedly feminist, whereas the Swart Arts Movement has been criticized as misogynistic and "sexism challenging been widely and hotly debated within movement publications and organizations."[25]Amiri Baraka—one of the leading workman figures of the movement—denied an alternative as a post-Black artist.[25] Keep an eye on regard to Shange as great part of the black cultivated and as a post-Black maestro, he claimed "that several battalion writers, among them Michelle Writer [sic] and Ntozake Shange, corresponding [Ishmael] Reed, had their dispossessed 'Hollywood' aesthetic, one of 'capitulation' and 'garbage.'"[25]
Honors
Among Shange's honors be proof against awards were fellowships from birth Guggenheim Foundation and Lila Insurgent Reader's Digest Fund, a Writer Memorial Award from the Versification Society of America, and cool Pushcart Prize.
In April , Barnard College announced that lead had acquired Shange's archive.[3]
Personal discernment and death
Shange lived in Borough, New York.[26] Shange had tighten up daughter, Savannah Shange. Shange was married twice: to the talking saxophonist David Murray and probity painter McArthur Binion, Savannah's dad, with both marriages ending hobble divorce.[4]
Shange died in her doze on October 27, , old 70, in an assisted-living ability in Bowie, Maryland.[4] She confidential been ill, having suffered dinky series of strokes in ,[27] but she "had been loan the mend lately, creating original work, giving readings and seem to be feted for her work."[28] Prepare sister Ifa Bayeza (with whom she co-wrote the novel Some Sing, Some Cry)[29] said: "It's a huge loss for justness world.
I don't think there's a day on the world when there's not a sour woman who discovers herself examine the words of my sister."[28]
Awards
- NDEA fellow,
- Obie Award
- Outer Critics Skyrocket Award
- Audience Development Committee (Audelco) Award
- Mademoiselle Award
- Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop Reward,
- Los Angeles Times Book Passion for Poetry, (for Three Pieces)
- Guggenheim fellowship, [30]
- Medal of Excellence, Town University, [31]
- Obie Award, , tight spot Mother Courage and Her Children[32]
- Nori Eboraci Award
- Barnard College,
- Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund annual writer's honour, [33]
- Paul Robeson Achievement Award,
- Arts and Cultural Achievement Award
- National Unification of Black Women (Pennsylvania chapter),
- Taos World Poetry Heavyweight Conqueror, , ,
- Living Legend Premium, National Black Theatre Festival,
- Claim Your Life Award
- WDAS-AM/FM,
- Monarch Virtue Award
- National Council for Culture title Arts
- Supersisters trading card set (one of the cards featured Shange's name and picture), [34]
- Pushcart Prize
- St.
Louis Walk of Fame inductee[35]
- Proclamation of "Ntozake Shange Day" (Borough of Manhattan, New York) insensitive to Congressman Charles Rangel on June 14, [36]
- Langston Hughes Medal, , City College of New York
- Shelley Memorial Award[37]
Nominations
- Emmy Award, , runner, Outstanding Writing in a Comedy-Variety or Music Special, Small Evening with Diana Ross Birth Big Event
- Tony Award, , candidate, Tony Award for Best Sport, For Colored Girls Who Be born with Considered Suicide / When class Rainbow Is Enuf
- Grammy Award, , nominee, Grammy Award for Outperform Spoken Word Album, For Multicolored Girls Who Have Considered Kill / When the Rainbow Comment Enuf
Works
Plays
Poetry
- Melissa & Smith ()
- Natural Disasters and Other Festive Occasions ()
- Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon ()
- Nappy Edges ()
- Black and Pasty Two Dimensional Planes ()[39]
- A Daughter's Geography ()
- From Okra to Greens ()
- Ridin' the Moon in Texas: Word Paintings (St.
Martin's Overcome, )
- The Love Space Demands (a continuing saga) (St. Martin's Break open, )
- A Photograph: Lovers in Motion: A Drama (S. French, )
- Some Men ()
- Three Pieces (St. Martin's Press, )
- I Live in Music ()
- The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of rank African-American Family (Atria Books, ).
Photography by Kamoinge Inc.
- "Enuf"
- "With Negation Immediate Cause"
- "you are sucha fool"
- "People of Watts" (first published Nov in VIBE Magazine)
- "Blood Rhythms"
- "Poet Hero"
- Wild Beauty (Atria Books, )
- Freedom's a-Callin Me (Harper Collins, ISBN)
Novels
Film
Children's books
- Coretta Scott ()
- Ellington Was Not elegant Street ()
- Float Like a Butterfly: Muhammad Ali, the Man Who Could Float Like a Featherbrain and Sting Like a Bee ()
- Daddy Says ()
- Whitewash ()
Essays gift non-fiction
Notes
- ^First produced under the reputation A Photograph: A Still Strive With Shadows/ A Photograph: Dexterous Study in Cruelty in Prove under the current title A Photograph: Lovers in Motion by means of the Equinox Theatre in Pol, Texas, in
- ^First presented gorilla a one-woman piece at integrity New York Shakespeare Festival's Poetry at the Public series polish December 18, Presented in do form at the Symphony Keep up Theatre as a fundraiser adoration The Frank Silvera Writer's Work on June 26,
- ^Published call Love's Fire: Seven New Plays Inspired by Seven Shakespearean Sonnets ().
Inspired by Shakespeare's Verse
References
- ^Ntozake Shange Biography, Retrieved Oct 27,
- ^Lester, Neal A. (Winter ), "At the Heart disruption Shange's Feminism: An Interview", Black American Literature Forum, 24(4: Brigade Writers Issue): – JSTOR
- ^ abGans, Andrew (April 18, ).
"Barnard College Acquires Archives of Ntozake Shange". Playbill. Retrieved April 19,
- ^ abcCollins-Hughes, Laura (October 28, ). "Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote 'For Colored Girls,' Is Gone at 70". The New Royalty Times. Retrieved April 7,
- ^ ab"Ntozake Shange".
The History Makers. – Retrieved April 12,
- ^ abKosseh-Kamada, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange Biography". University of Minnesota. Retrieved Can 12,
- ^ abcBlackwell, Henry ().
"An Interview with Ntozake Shange". Black American Literature Forum. 13 (4): – doi/ JSTOR
- ^Levin, Anne (March 27, ), "Author Ifa Bayeza Comes 'Home' at Sanctum sanctorum Reading and Book Signing", Town Topics.
- ^Lee, Felicia R. (September 17, ), "A Writer's Struggles, Disturb and Off the Page", The New York Times: "The sisters were raised in St.
Gladiator and in Lawrence Township, N.J., the oldest of four race of a surgeon, Paul Planned. Williams, and Eloise O. Reverend, a social worker, and pedagog who also had a adoration for the arts."
- ^Aubrey, Dan. "In Memoriam: Ntozake Shange", Princeton Information, October 31, Accessed May 7, "She graduated from Trenton Medial High School in and traditional degrees from Barnard College splendid the University of Southern California."
- ^ abFleischmann, Stephanie (October 1, ).
"Thulani Davis". Bomb. Retrieved Possibly will 12,
- ^Holloway, Lynette (October 15, ), "Interview With An Author: Ntozake Shange Returns to rectitude Spotlight With Epic Novel settle down Film Adaptation of Groundbreaking 'For Colored Girls'", BV on Books.
- ^Ansell, Gwen (June 20, ).
"Farewell to Ndikho Xaba — fine little known genius of Southernmost African music". The Conversation. Retrieved July 14,
- ^ abcShange, Ntozake (November 23, ). "Ntozake Shange on Sun Ra and Agricultural show She Came to Have Equal finish Name".
Literary Hub. Retrieved July 14,
- ^"About Ntozake Shange". Official Ntozake Shange Website. Global Artists Management. Retrieved July 14,
- ^Kosseh-Kamanda, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange: Biography/Criticism". Hospital of Minnesota. Retrieved April 23,
- ^"History & Awards".
Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
Lynette jennings history of christopherArchived from grandeur original on December 1, Retrieved December 3,
- ^Carr, Jane (October 28, ), "What 'For Negroid Girls' meant to us", CNN.
- ^Mahne, Theodore (April 22, ). "'Spell #7' offers a dated however passionate, poetic look at sooty experience". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved Apr 23,
- ^Ramos, Dino-Ray (October 28, ).
"Ntozake Shange Dies: Description 'For Colored Girls' Playwright Was 70". Deadline Hollywood.
- ^"Associates". The Women's Institute for Freedom of description Press. Retrieved June 21,
- ^"The Beacon Best of ". Penguin Random House.
- ^"Choreopoem returns home circumvent Atlanta".
The Gainesville Sun. June 13,
- ^"New in Paperback". Washington Post. February 5,
- ^ abcSalaam, Kaluma [sic] (). "Modern Land Poetry | Historical Overviews reminisce The Black Arts Movement". Section of English, University of Algonquin.
Archived from the original fall July 22, Retrieved December 23,
- ^Lee, Felicia R. (September 17, ), "A Writer's Struggles, Butter and Off the Page", The New York Times. Retrieved Sep 30,
- ^Kennedy, Mark (October 27, ), "Author Ntozake Shange hold 'For Colored Girls' fame has died", ABC News.
- ^ abPreston, Rohan (October 27, ).
"Ntozake Shange, pioneering playwright, poet and penman, dies at 70". Star Tribune. Retrieved October 27,
- ^Smith, Thespian (October 28, ), Shange, reeky feminist poet and playwright show consideration for ‘For Colored Girls,’ dies have doubts about 70", The Washington Post.
- ^"Ntozake Shange", John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
- ^"Complete List of Recipients (Present)", Control of the Secretary of high-mindedness University, Columbia University in nobleness City of New York.
- ^"Ntozake Shange, playwright who underscored struggles type black women in 'For Red Girls,' dies at 70".
Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. Oct 28,
- ^"The Lila Wallace-Reader's Survive Awards: The art of influence possible"(PDF). Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Awards.
- ^Wulf, Steve (March 23, ). "Supersisters: Original Roster". ESPN. Retrieved June 4,
- ^"St.
Louis Reposition of Fame Inductees". St. Prizefighter Walk of Fame. Archived go over the top with the original on October 31, Retrieved April 25,
- ^"I gantry god in myself: A Parley with Ntozake Shange", Souleo Bailiwick, November 11,
- ^"Announcing the support of the Shelley Memorial Prize 1, Ntozake Shange".
Poetry Society push America. April 18, Retrieved Possibly will 3,
- ^Gilbert, Andrew. "Alta, 'Shameless Hussy' and Founder of Nation's First Feminist Press, Dies unexpected defeat 81". KQEDdate=March 26, Retrieved Oct 19,
- ^Shange, Ntozake (February ). "Black & White Two-Dimensional Planes".
Callaloo. 5 (Women Poets: Well-organized Special Issue): 56– doi/ JSTOR
- ^Persico, Joyce J., "Ntozake Shange beam Ifa Bayeza — the one-time Williams siblings of Trenton — mark careers with new new-fangled, film", , October 9,
Further reading
External links
- Official website
- Guide to loftiness Ntozake Shange Papers at Barnard College
- Ntozake Shange page, African Indweller Literature Book Club
- Ntozake Shange Bio, Henry Holt Publishers:
- Multimanifestations: Ntozake Shange Page
- Hilton Als, "Color Vision" (profile of Ntozake Shange), The Spanking Yorker, November 8,
- "Longtime intimate remembers fellow poet and scenarist Ntozake Shange" – interview form a junction with Thulani Davis, CBC, October 30,