{"id":187281,"date":"2018-10-28T04:13:44","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T08:13:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=187281"},"modified":"2018-10-28T04:13:44","modified_gmt":"2018-10-28T08:13:44","slug":"author-ntozake-shange-colored-girls-fame-died","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/10\/28\/author-ntozake-shange-colored-girls-fame-died\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Ntozake Shange of ‘For Colored Girls’ fame has died"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Shange’s \u201cFor Colored Girls\u201d describes the racism, sexism, violence and rape experienced by seven black women. It has been influential to generations of progressive thinkers, from #MeToo architect Tarana Burke to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. (File Photo<\/a>: @NtozakeShange1\/Twitter<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed theatre piece is the 1975 Tony Award-nominated play \u201cFor Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide\/When the Rainbow is Enuf,\u201d died Saturday, according to her daughter. She was 70.<\/p>\n

Shange’s \u201cFor Colored Girls\u201d describes the racism, sexism, violence and rape experienced by seven black women. It has been influential to generations of progressive thinkers, from #MeToo architect Tarana Burke to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. After learning of Shange’s death, Nottage called her \u201cour warrior poet\/dramatist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Savannah Shange, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said Saturday that her mother died in her sleep at an assisted living facility in Bowie, Maryland. She had suffered a series of strokes in 2004.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe spoke for, and in fact embodied, the ongoing struggle of black women and girls to live with dignity and respect in the context of systemic racism, sexism and oppression,\u201d Savannah Shange said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Colored Girls\u201d is an interwoven series of poetic monologues set to music \u2014 Shange coined the form a \u201cchoreopoem\u201d for it \u2014 by African-American women, each identified only by a colour that she wears.<\/p>\n

Shange used idiosyncratic punctuation and nonstandard spellings in her work, challenging conventions. One of her characters shouts, \u201ci will raise my voice \/ & scream & holler \/ & break things & race the engine \/ & tell all yr secrets bout yrself to yr face.\u201d<\/p>\n

It played some 750 performances on Broadway \u2014 only the second play by an African-American woman after \u201cA Raisin in the Sun\u201d \u2014 and was turned into a feature film by Tyler Perry starring Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington and Janet Jackson.<\/p>\n

Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, she went on to graduate from Barnard College and got a master’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her father, Dr. Paul T. Williams, was a surgeon. Her mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work. She later assumed a new Zulu name: Ntozake means \u201cShe who comes with her own things\u201d and Shange means \u201cShe who walks like a lion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFor Colored Girls\u201d opened at the Public Theater in downtown Manhattan, with Shange, then 27, performing as one of the women. The New York Times reviewer called it \u201cextraordinary and wonderful\u201d and \u201ca very humbling but inspiring thing for a white man to experience.\u201d It earned Shange an Obie Award and she won a second such award in 1981 for her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s \u201cMother Courage and Her Children\u201d at the Public Theater.<\/p>\n

Shange’s other 15 plays include \u201cA Photograph: A Study of Cruelty\u201d (1977), \u201cBoogie Woogie Landscapes\u201d (1977), \u201cSpell No. 7\u201d (1979) and \u201cBlack and White Two Dimensional Planes\u201d (1979).<\/p>\n

Her list of published works includes 19 poetry collections, six novels, five children’s books and three collections of essays. Some of her novels are \u201cSassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo\u201d (1982) and \u201cSome Sing, Some Cry,\u201d with her sister, Ifa Bayeza. Her poetry collections include \u201cI Live in Music\u201d (1994) and \u201cThe Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family\u201d (2004). She appeared in an episode of \u201cTransparent\u201d and helped narrate the 2002 documentary \u201cStanding in the Shadows of Motown.\u201d<\/p>\n

She worked with such black theatre companies as the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco; the New Freedom Theater in Philadelphia; Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey; St. Louis Black Rep; Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota; and The Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Texas.<\/p>\n

Shange taught at Brown University, Rice University, Villanova University, DePaul University, Prairie View University and Sonoma State University. She also lectured at Yale, Howard, New York University, among others.<\/p>\n

In addition to her daughter and sister, Shange is survived by sister Bisa Williams, brother Paul T. Williams, Jr. and a granddaughter, Harriet Shange-Watkins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed theatre piece is the 1975 Tony Award-nominated play …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":187282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","mauthors-mark-kennedy","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}