Ntozake Shange, renowned and beloved poet, playwright, novelist, performance artist, essayist and educator, died in her sleep Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018. Shange, a Black feminist icon, made major contributions to the genres of drama, fiction, memoir and poetry. In her childhood, she was affected deeply by the Civil Rights Movement and later participated in a wide variety of radical activism, including the anti-war movement, women’s liberation, the Black Arts and Black Liberation movements, the Puerto Rican Liberation Movement and the sexual revolution. Above all, she 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.
Shange is perhaps best known for her landmark theater work, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” which premiered at the New Federal Theatre, in New York City, in the summer of 1975 and in a meteoric move, opened at The Public Theater that fall and at the Booth Theatre on Broadway the following September. The play’s many prestigious awards include an Obie Award for Distinguished Production and a Tony nomination. “For Colored Girls,” which Shange defined as a “choreopoem” for its highly original combination of poetry, dance and music, is considered a landmark in American theater and in theater worldwide. The work continues to be performed throughout the world and has remained in print since its publication in 1975. The work has been translated to film twice: the 1982 PBS American Playhouse production and the 2010 movie produced by Tyler Perry. “For Colored Girls” stands as one of only two unquestioned Broadway hit productions by African-American women in the history of theater—the other, the incomparable Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959, “A Raisin in the Sun.” Shange won a second Obie in 1981 for her adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage and Her Children” at the Public Theater.
In a prolific career, Shange wrote 15 plays, 19 poetry collections, six novels, five children’s books and three collections of essays. Among her more notable novels are “Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo,” “Betsey Brown” (about her childhood and the Civil Rights Movement in St. Louis) and the highly innovative semi-autobiographical “Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter,” incorporating the methods of psychoanalysis in the narrative. As she did with many other pieces of her fiction and poetry, Shange adapted “Lilian” for the stage, and it debuted at Rites and Reason Theatre at Brown University. In 2010, she co-authored with her sister, Ifa Bayeza, “Some Sing, Some Cry,” a novel chronicling 200 years of African-American music and dance through seven generations of a fictional family. Among her other notable works are a photograph titled “Lovers-in-Motion,” a play titled “Spell #7” and a book of poetry and play titled “From Okra to Greens.” Most recently, she published “Wild Beauty,” a collection of poetry that was named the International Latin American Book Awards 2018 Best Poetry Volume—Bilingual.
Deeply committed to creating collaboratively, Shange partnered with some of the finest artists spanning many genres, among them, theater director Oz Scott; musicians Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, David Murray, Oliver Lake, Kahil El Zabar, Hamiet Bluiette and Craig Harris; poets Thulani Davis and Jessica Hagedorn; and choreographers Dianne McIntyre, Mickey Davidson and Paula Moss. She also collaborated with notable Black photographers of her era in the highly praised photo-and-poetry collection, “The Sweet Breath of Life.”
Shange was committed to working with innovative artists of color. She worked with almost every major Black theater company in the country, including the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco, the New Freedom Theatre in Philadelphia, Crossroads Theatre Company in New Brunswick, N.J., St. Louis Black Rep, Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul and The Ensemble Theatre in Houston.
Shange has won a veritable mountain of awards, most recently the 2018 Shelley Memorial Prize of the Poetry Society of America, the 2018 Hurston/Wright Foundation North Star Award and the 2016 Langston Hughes Medal for Literature conferred by the City University of New York. Other honors include an Outer Critics Circle Award, an AUDELCO Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Writer’s Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, the Paul Robeson Achievement Award, the National Black Theatre Festival’s Living Legend Award, a New Federal Theatre Lifetime Achievement Award and the Medal of Excellence from Columbia University.
Shange taught at major universities, including Brown University, Rice University, Villanova University, DePaul University, Prairie View University and Sonoma State University. She lectured extensively at perhaps a hundred different universities and colleges, including Yale, Howard, NYU, Mills College, the California State Colleges and the City College of New York. She traveled the world, including a tour in South Africa with the renowned choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Her travels were also defined by her political calling, taking her to Black revolutionary spaces in the Caribbean, Cuba, Angola and Nicaragua, where she often met and talked with progressive and populist leaders.
Always the trailblazer, Shange in recent years presented new combinations of dance and poetry at such venues as Barnard College and Oberlin College. Shange’s most recent work, a one-act choreo-essay called “Lost in Language & Sound” (adapted from the memoir of the same title), is an ambitious attempt to present a poetic panorama of her entire life, and the wisdom learned therein, within the confines of a one-hour musical and choreographic drama. It premiered at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City and saw workshop performances of a substantially revised version at 651 Arts Center, Brooklyn and Karamu House, Cleveland in 2015. In recognition of this work, and all of her other cultural contributions, Shange was honored with a Ntozake Shange Day Proclamation, Borough of Manhattan, N.Y., by Congressman Charles Rangel, June 14, 2014.
Her extraordinary career took a great toll on her as she managed bipolar disorder and struggled with bouts of addiction. After facing a major health setback with a series of strokes in 2004, Shange dedicated the last decade of her life to wellness and creativity. In addition to writing new works and developing new collaborations, she maintained her commitment to political change as an elder, serving as a rally speaker at both the Women’s March in 2017 and the March for Black Women in September 2018.
Shange was raised mainly in Trenton, N.J., and St. Louis, Mo., and is a graduate of Trenton High School, Barnard College and the University of Southern California, where she earned an MA in American Studies. Born Paulette Linda Williams, Shange hailed from an accomplished family. Her father, Dr. Paul T. Williams, was a surgeon. Her mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work.
She is survived by her daughter, anthropologist Savannah Shange, child-in-law Dr. Kenshata Watkins and granddaughter Harriet Shange-Watkins; her sisters playwright Ifa Bayeza and Bisa Williams, a career diplomat and former ambassador to Niger; her brother attorney Paul T. Williams Jr. and his wife Ammie Williams; and her nephews and nieces, Michael Manigault Jr.; Marlowe Williams-Hawkins; Paul T. Williams III and Alexandra Williams; and family and friends worldwide.
Shange’s gift for language emerged from the depths of the African diasporic experience, coupled with a DuBoisian grasp of history, politics, literature, music, movement and philosophies of liberation. Inventing the word “choreopoem” to describe the fluid interdisciplinary nature of her work, Shange entered a new word into the dictionary and, through the form, created a theatrical genre. Her words have a way of speaking to each person. Every day, somewhere in the world, a young girl discovers herself in Shange’s immortal words: “sing a Black girl’s song, bring her out to know herself, her own infinite beauty, and handle, handle warmly.”