Ntozake Shange – Poet, Novelist and Playwright - Raising Black Kids To Be Avid Readers

Ntozake Shange – Poet, Novelist and Playwright

Ntozake Shange (1948- 2018) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright famous for her activism work and her play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf.”

Born in 1948 as Paulette L. Williams to an upper-middle class family, Shange lived a comfortable life. However, that change at the age of 8. She and her family moved to the segregated city of St. Louis around the time of Brown vs. The Board of Education. Because of this, Shange was among the first round of students bused to and intergrated into a majority white school. The racism and hate-filled attacks she suffered through there shaped her perspective for years to come. And, considering her family heavily emphasized the importance of the arts, her emotions relating to the hate were bound to come out in the form of art.

Shange, gifted academically, succeeded in primary, secondary, and post-secondary school. However, her final stage of education was not without its hardships. In her first year, she got married and the marriage did not last. That with the addition of her feeling painfully excluded from her college experience left Shange so depressed that she attempted suicide. After the failed attempt, Shange redirected her sadness into her work. She changed her name to Ntozake Shange, the first name representing her ownership over herself and last representing ferocity and determination.

Her ferocity and self-confidence carried her to New York after a stint at University of Southern California for a Master’s Degree in American Studies. In New York, she produced her world-renowned play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf.” The play ran briefly off-Broadway in 1975, but was soon moved to big leagues. The Broadway play received several awards and in 2010, Tyler Perry adapted the play to film, calling it “For Colored Girls.”

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf (1976)

After “for colored girls,” Shange wrote “Photograph: A Study of Cruelty,” “Boogie Woogie Landscapes,”“Spell No. 7,” and “Black and White Two Dimensional Planes” between the years of 1977 to 1979. All of Shange’s work is described as uniquely poetic, which can be traced back to her love of poems in her youth.

She has also written children’s literature, published essay collections, penned novels, and edited Beacon’s Best—a literature collection aimed at highlighting lesser-known writers of color.

Shange, after years of emotional struggles, was enjoying the fruits of her labor when a pair of strokes hit in the 2000s. Then, in 2011, she was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. The disease makes it difficult for her to write, type, or even to walk. While writing became a struggle for her, she spent time being active in the community. She would sometimes gives readings at local colleges actively discussing and bringing attention to issues of race and gender.

On October 27,2018, at the age of 70, Ntozake died in her sleep in Bowie, Maryland.