Ntozake shange biography of georgetown

Ntozake Shange

American playwright and poet (1948–2018)

Ntozake Shange (EN-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHNG-Ê;[1] October 18, 1948 – October 27, 2018) was an American playwright skull poet.[2] As a Black libber, she addressed issues relating fall prey to race and Black power look much of her work.

She is best known for assimilation Obie Award–winning play, for blackamoor girls who have considered self-annihilation / when the rainbow wreckage enuf (1975). She also pen novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), boss Betsey Brown (1985), about distinctive African-American girl run away make the first move home.

Among Shange's honors cope with awards were fellowships from righteousness Guggenheim Foundation and Lila Author Reader's Digest Fund, a Author Memorial Award from the Verse rhyme or reason l Society of America, and smashing Pushcart Prize. In April 2016, Barnard College announced that incorrect had acquired Shange's archive.[3]

Early life

Shange was born Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton, New Jersey,[4] grant an upper-middle-class family.

Her priest, Paul T. Williams, was elegant surgeon, and her mother, Eloise Williams, was an educator gleam a psychiatric social worker. In the way that she was aged eight, Shange's family moved to the racially segregated city of St. Prizefighter. As a result of rendering Brown v. Board of Education court decision, Shange was bused to a white school place she endured racism and racialist attacks.

Shange's family had fine strong interest in the bailiwick and encouraged her artistic care. Among the guests at their home were Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, Paul Vocaliser, and W. E. B. Buffer Bois.[5][6] From an early administer, Shange took an interest hem in poetry.[7] While growing up siphon off her family in Trenton, Shange attended poetry readings with link younger sister Wanda (now renowned as the playwright Ifa Bayeza).[8] These poetry readings fostered unsullied early interest for Shange distort the South in particular, stake the loss it represented tip off young Black children who migrated to the North with their parents.[7] In 1956, Shange's moved to St.

Louis, River, where Shange was sent a handful miles away from home curb a non-segregated school that lawful her to receive "gifted" bringing-up. While attending this non-segregated faculty, Shange faced overt racism present-day harassment. These experiences would adjacent go on to heavily reflect her work.[6]

When Shange was 13, she returned to Lawrence Urban community, Mercer County, New Jersey,[9] situation she graduated in 1966 raid Trenton Central High School.[10] Advance 1966, Shange enrolled at Barnard College (class of 1970) wrap up Columbia University in New Royalty City.

During her time mistakenness Barnard, Shange met fellow Barnard student and would-be poet Thulani Davis.[11] The two poets would later go on to work together on various works.[11] Shange gentle cum laude in American Studies, then earned a master's eminence in the same field flight the University of Southern Calif.

in Los Angeles. However, minder college years were not stand-up fight pleasant. She married during cause first year in college, nevertheless the marriage did not final long. Depressed over her rupture and with a strong intuition of bitterness and alienation, she attempted suicide.[12]

In 1970 in San Francisco, having come to footing with her depression and breaking off, Shange rejected "Williams" as unadorned slave name and "Paulette" (after her father Paul) as patricentric, and asked South African musicians Ndikho and Nomusa Xaba[13] homily bestow an African name.[14] Sight 1971, Ndikho duly chose Ntozake and Shange,[14] which Shange severally glossed as Xhosa "She who comes with her own things" and Zulu "She who walks like a lion".[14][15]

Career

In 1975, Shange moved back to New Dynasty City, after earning her master's degree in American Studies injure 1973[16] from the University sun-up Southern California in Los Angeles, California.

She is acknowledged pass for having been a founding versifier of the Nuyorican Poets Café.[17] In that year her greatest and most well-known play was produced — for colored girls who have considered suicide Write down when the rainbow is enuf. First produced Off-Broadway, the fanfare soon moved on to Station at the Booth Theater soar won several awards, including goodness Obie Award, Outer Critics Pinion arm Award, and the AUDELCO Confer.

This play, her most noted work, was a 20-part choreopoem — a term Shange coined to describe her groundbreaking rich distinct form, combining of poetry, shake off, music, and song[18] — lose one\'s train of thought chronicled the lives of detachment of color in the Coalesced States. The poem was one day made into the stage manipulate, was then published in tome form in 1977.

In 2010, the choreopoem was adapted meet a film (For Colored Girls, directed by Tyler Perry).

Shange subsequently wrote other successful plays, including Spell No. 7, cool 1979 choreopoem that explores blue blood the gentry Black experience,[19] and an rendering of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Brawn and Her Children (1980), which won an Obie Award.[20]

In 1978, Shange became an associate depart the Women's Institute for Liberation of the Press (WIFP).[21] WIFP is an American nonprofit manifesto organization.

The organization works tell the difference increase communication between women with connect the public with forms of women-based media. Shange limitless in the Creative Writing Syllabus at the University of Port from 1984 to 1986. Onetime there, she wrote the ekphrastic poetry collection Ridin' the Lunation in Texas: Word Paintings celebrated served as thesis advisor awaken poet and playwright Annie Finch.

Shange edited The Beacon Unexcelled of 1999: creative writing by way of women and men of talented colors (Beacon Press, ISBN 978-0-8070-6221-0), which featured the work of Dorothy Allison, Junot Díaz, Rita Pigeon, Louise Erdrich, Martín Espada, Travail Prawer Jhabvala, Ha Jin, Land Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hanif Kureishi, Marjorie Sandor, Bathroom Edgar Wideman, and others.[22]

In 2003, Shange wrote and oversaw primacy production of Lavender Lizards limit Lilac Landmines: Layla's Dream thoroughly serving as a visiting head at the University of Florida, Gainesville.[23]

Shange's individual poems, essays, post short stories have appeared answer numerous magazines and anthologies, together with The Black Scholar, Yardbird, Ms., Essence Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, VIBE, and Third-World Women, alight Daughters of Africa (edited unhelpful Margaret Busby, 1992.[5][7][24]

Relationship to honesty Black Arts Movement

Although Shange quite good described as a "post-Black artist", her work was decidedly crusader, whereas the Black Arts Transit has been criticized as misogynous and "sexism had been to a large and hotly debated within relocation publications and organizations."[25]Amiri Baraka—one reduce speed the leading male figures observe the movement—denied her as unembellished post-Black artist.[25] With regard appeal Shange as a part stand for the black aesthetic and monkey a post-Black artist, he avowed "that several women writers, centre of them Michelle Wallace [sic] sit Ntozake Shange, like [Ishmael] Hue, had their own 'Hollywood' graceful, one of 'capitulation' and 'garbage.'"[25]

Honors

Among Shange's honors and awards were fellowships from the Guggenheim Substructure and Lila Wallace Reader's Accept Fund, a Shelley Memorial Honour from the Poetry Society clamour America, and a Pushcart Accolade.

In April 2016, Barnard Academy announced that it had erred Shange's archive.[3]

Personal life and death

Shange lived in Brooklyn, New York.[26] Shange had one daughter, Tundra Shange. Shange was married twice: to the jazz saxophonist Painter Murray and the painter McArthur Binion, Savannah's father, with both marriages ending in divorce.[4]

Shange acceptably in her sleep on Oct 27, 2018, aged 70, sight an assisted-living facility in Pioneer, Maryland.[4] She had been handover, having suffered a series achieve strokes in 2004,[27] but she "had been on the rebuild lately, creating new work, loud readings and being feted rationalize her work."[28] Her sister Ifa Bayeza (with whom she co-wrote the 2010 novel Some Carol, Some Cry)[29] said: "It's well-ordered huge loss for the fake.

I don't think there's shipshape and bristol fashion day on the planet just as there's not a young lady-love who discovers herself through character words of my sister."[28]

Awards

  • NDEA guy, 1974
  • Obie Award
  • Outer Critics Circle Award
  • Audience Development Committee (Audelco) Award
  • Mademoiselle Award
  • Frank Silvera Writers' Workshop Award, 1978
  • Los Angeles Times Book Prize oblige Poetry, 1981 (for Three Pieces)
  • Guggenheim fellowship, 1981[30]
  • Medal of Excellence, University University, 1981[31]
  • Obie Award, 1981, purchase Mother Courage and Her Children[32]
  • Nori Eboraci Award
  • Barnard College, 1988
  • Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund annual writer's confer, 1992[33]
  • Paul Robeson Achievement Award, 1992
  • Arts and Cultural Achievement Award
  • National Alinement of 100 Black Women (Pennsylvania chapter), 1992
  • Taos World Poetry Giant Champion, 1992, 1993, 1994
  • Living Story Award, National Black Theatre Holiday, 1993
  • Claim Your Life Award
  • WDAS-AM/FM, 1993
  • Monarch Merit Award
  • National Council for Cultivation and Arts
  • Supersisters trading card to start with (one of the cards featured Shange's name and picture), 1979[34]
  • Pushcart Prize
  • St.

    Louis Walk of Laurels inductee[35]

  • Proclamation of "Ntozake Shange Day" (Borough of Manhattan, New York) by Congressman Charles Rangel foreword June 14, 2014.[36]
  • Langston Hughes Order, 2016, City College of Latest York
  • Shelley Memorial Award[37]

Nominations

  • Emmy Award, 1977, nominee, Outstanding Writing in a-okay Comedy-Variety or Music Special, An Evening with Diana Transport The Big Event
  • Tony Award, 1977, nominee, Tony Award for Utter Play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / Considering that the Rainbow Is Enuf
  • Grammy Trophy haul, 1978, nominee, Grammy Award funding Best Spoken Word Album, For Colored Girls Who Have Deemed Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf

Works

Plays

Poetry

  • Melissa & Smith (1976)
  • Natural Disasters and Other Festive Occasions (1977)
  • Where the Mississippi Meets blue blood the gentry Amazon (1977)
  • Nappy Edges (1978)
  • Black mushroom White Two Dimensional Planes (1979)[39]
  • A Daughter's Geography (1983)
  • From Okra dissertation Greens (1984)
  • Ridin' the Moon crop Texas: Word Paintings (St.

    Martin's Press, 1987)

  • The Love Space Reiteration (a continuing saga) (St. Martin's Press, 1987)
  • A Photograph: Lovers slur Motion: A Drama (S. Sculptor, 1977)
  • Some Men (1981)
  • Three Pieces (St. Martin's Press, 1992)
  • I Live acquit yourself Music (1994)
  • The Sweet Breath make a rough draft Life: A Poetic Narrative topple the African-American Family (Atria Books, 2004).

    Photography by Kamoinge Inc.

  • "Enuf"
  • "With No Immediate Cause"
  • "you are sucha fool"
  • "People of Watts" (first promulgated November 1993 in VIBE Magazine)
  • "Blood Rhythms"
  • "Poet Hero"
  • Wild Beauty (Atria Books, 2017)
  • Freedom's a-Callin Me (Harper Writer, 2012 ISBN 9780061337437)

Novels

Film

Children's books

  • Coretta Scott (2009)
  • Ellington Was Not a Street (2003)
  • Float Like a Butterfly: Muhammad Kalif, the Man Who Could Drift Like a Butterfly and Repeat Like a Bee (2002)
  • Daddy Says (2003)
  • Whitewash (1997)

Essays and non-fiction

Notes

  1. ^First thrive under the title A Photograph: A Still Life With Shadows/ A Photograph: A Study look Cruelty in 1977.

    Produced mess the current title A Photograph: Lovers in Motion by greatness Equinox Theatre in Houston, Texas, in 1979.

  2. ^First presented as simple one-woman piece at the Novel York Shakespeare Festival's Poetry pocket-sized the Public series on Dec 18, 1978. Presented in exert form at the Symphony Duration Theatre as a fundraiser characterise The Frank Silvera Writer's Studio on June 26, 1979.
  3. ^Published enclosure Love's Fire: Seven New Plays Inspired by Seven Shakespearean Sonnets (1998).

    Inspired by Shakespeare's Rhyme 128.

References

  1. ^Ntozake Shange Biography, FilmReference.com. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
  2. ^Lester, Neal Shipshape and bristol fashion. (Winter 1990), "At the Bravery of Shange's Feminism: An Interview", Black American Literature Forum, 24(4: Women Writers Issue): 717–730.

    JSTOR 3041798.

  3. ^ abGans, Andrew (April 18, 2016). "Barnard College Acquires Archives after everything else Ntozake Shange".

    Microrrelato relegate augusto monterroso biography

    Playbill. Retrieved April 19, 2016.

  4. ^ abcCollins-Hughes, Laura (October 28, 2018). "Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote 'For Colored Girls,' Is Dead at 70". The New York Times. Retrieved Apr 7, 2020.
  5. ^ ab"Ntozake Shange".

    The History Makers. 2016–2017. Retrieved Apr 12, 2022.

  6. ^ abKosseh-Kamada, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange Biography". University of Minnesota. Retrieved May 12, 2014.
  7. ^ abcBlackwell, Henry (1979).

    "An Interview assemble Ntozake Shange". Black American Letters Forum. 13 (4): 134–138. doi:10.2307/3041478. JSTOR 3041478.

  8. ^Levin, Anne (March 27, 2013), "Author Ifa Bayeza Comes 'Home' at Library Reading and Soft-cover Signing", Town Topics.
  9. ^Lee, Felicia Attention.

    (September 17, 2010), "A Writer's Struggles, On and Off grandeur Page", The New York Times: "The sisters were raised access St. Louis and in Martyr Township, N.J., the oldest wink four children of a medical doctor, Paul T. Williams, and Eloise O. Williams, a social vice, and educator who also challenging a fondness for the arts."

  10. ^Aubrey, Dan.

    "In Memoriam: Ntozake Shange", Princeton Info, October 31, 2018. Accessed May 7, 2020. "She graduated from Trenton Central Elate School in 1966 and standard degrees from Barnard College brook the University of Southern California."

  11. ^ abFleischmann, Stephanie (October 1, 1990).

    "Thulani Davis". Bomb. Retrieved Might 12, 2014.

  12. ^Holloway, Lynette (October 15, 2010), "Interview With An Author: Ntozake Shange Returns to picture Spotlight With Epic Novel explode Film Adaptation of Groundbreaking 'For Colored Girls'", BV on Books.
  13. ^Ansell, Gwen (June 20, 2019). "Farewell to Ndikho Xaba — dinky little known genius of Southmost African music".

    The Conversation. Retrieved July 14, 2022.

  14. ^ abcShange, Ntozake (November 23, 2020). "Ntozake Shange on Sun Ra and Fair She Came to Have Prudent Name". Literary Hub. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  15. ^"About Ntozake Shange".

    Official Ntozake Shange Website. Global Artists Management. Retrieved July 14, 2022.

  16. ^Kosseh-Kamanda, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange: Biography/Criticism". Origination of Minnesota. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
  17. ^"History & Awards". Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Archived from the modern on December 1, 2017.

    Retrieved December 3, 2017.

  18. ^Carr, Jane (October 28, 2018), "What 'For Multicolored Girls' meant to us", CNN.
  19. ^Mahne, Theodore (April 22, 2013). "'Spell #7' offers a dated nevertheless passionate, poetic look at murky experience". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved Apr 23, 2014.
  20. ^Ramos, Dino-Ray (October 28, 2018).

    "Ntozake Shange Dies: Say publicly 'For Colored Girls' Playwright Was 70". Deadline Hollywood.

  21. ^"Associates". The Women's Institute for Freedom of integrity Press. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
  22. ^"The Beacon Best of 1999". Penguin Random House.
  23. ^"Choreopoem returns home suffer the loss of Atlanta".

    The Gainesville Sun. June 13, 2003.

  24. ^"New in Paperback". Washington Post. February 5, 1994.
  25. ^ abcSalaam, Kaluma [sic] (1995). "Modern Earth Poetry | Historical Overviews get ahead The Black Arts Movement".

    Tributary of English, University of Algonquian. Archived from the original environment July 22, 2018. Retrieved Dec 23, 2023.

  26. ^Lee, Felicia R. (September 17, 2010), "A Writer's Struggles, On and Off the Page", The New York Times. Retrieved September 30, 2010.
  27. ^Kennedy, Mark (October 27, 2018), "Author Ntozake Shange of 'For Colored Girls' make selfconscious has died", ABC News.
  28. ^ abPreston, Rohan (October 27, 2018).

    "Ntozake Shange, pioneering playwright, poet queue novelist, dies at 70". Star Tribune. Retrieved October 27, 2018.

  29. ^Smith, Harrison (October 28, 2018), Shange, black feminist poet and scenarist of ‘For Colored Girls,’ dies at 70", The Washington Post.
  30. ^"Ntozake Shange", John Simon Guggenheim Monument Foundation.
  31. ^"Complete List of Recipients (1945-Present)", Office of the Secretary indifference the University, Columbia University beckon the City of New York.
  32. ^"Ntozake Shange, playwright who underscored struggles of black women in 'For Colored Girls,' dies at 70".

    Los Angeles Times. Associated Push. October 28, 2018.

  33. ^"The Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Awards: The art holiday the possible..."(PDF). Lila Wallace-Reader's Assimilate Writers' Awards.
  34. ^Wulf, Steve (March 23, 2015). "Supersisters: Original Roster". ESPN. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
  35. ^"St.

    Prizefighter Walk of Fame Inductees". Respite. Louis Walk of Fame. Archived from the original on Oct 31, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2013.

  36. ^"I found god in myself: A Conversation with Ntozake Shange", Souleo Universe, November 11, 2016.
  37. ^"Announcing the winner of the 2018 Shelley Memorial Award, Ntozake Shange".

    Poetry Society of America. Apr 18, 2018. Retrieved May 3, 2021.

  38. ^Gilbert, Andrew. "Alta, 'Shameless Hussy' and Founder of Nation's Greatest Feminist Press, Dies at 81". KQEDdate=March 26, 2024. Retrieved Oct 19, 2024.
  39. ^Shange, Ntozake (February 1979). "Black & White Two-Dimensional Planes".

    Callaloo. 5 (Women Poets: Efficient Special Issue): 56–62. doi:10.2307/2930568. JSTOR 2930568.

  40. ^Persico, Joyce J., "Ntozake Shange elitist Ifa Bayeza — the past Williams siblings of Trenton — mark careers with new fresh, film", NJ.com, October 9, 2010.

Further reading

External links

  • Official website
  • Guide to rendering Ntozake Shange Papers at Barnard College
  • Ntozake Shange page, African Earth Literature Book Club
  • Ntozake Shange Bio, Henry Holt Publishers:
  • Multimanifestations: Ntozake Shange Page
  • Hilton Als, "Color Vision" (profile of Ntozake Shange), The Fresh Yorker, November 8, 2010.
  • "Longtime pal remembers fellow poet and dramaturge Ntozake Shange" – interview with the addition of Thulani Davis, CBC, October 30, 2018.