Ntozake Shange
Poet, performance artist, playwright, and novelist Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams on October 18, 1948, in Trenton, New Jersey. She earned a BA in American studies from Barnard College in 1970 and then left New York to pursue graduate studies at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. It was during this time that she took the name “Ntozake” (“she who comes into her own things”) “Shange” (“she who walks like a lion”) from the Zulu dialect Xhosa. She received an MA in American studies from USC in 1973. She passed October 27, 2018.
Books
Over four decades since For Colored Girls…, we see Ntozake’s immense influence in the ownership of our stories, from the heroines of Shonda Rhimes, to Issa Rae’s Insecure, to the revelations of the #MeToo movement. Many of us have accepted her blessing—the challenge she presented for us to show ourselves as the flawed, complicated, yet complete creatures we are. Intuitively, she knew that the telling of those stories—our beautiful, diasporic, sometimes broken, often dark stories—held the key to freeing ourselves from any attendant shame.
Because with these fresh words, as with all of her dark phrases, Ntozake Shange remains as necessary as ever; a timelessly relevant presence that dares you to speak of her in past tense. Because her wisdom is eternal. So, too, is her love.
—From the introduction by Maiysha Kai, Managing Editor The Glowup
ISBN: 978-0-9988310-3-9