Ntozake Shange (1948 - )

Born Paulette Williams on October 18, 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey, Ntozake Shange rose to national prominence following the 1975 production of her play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf: A Choreopoem. Known first for her work as an actress and playwright, Shange has also received acclaim over the past two decades for her work as a poet and novelist.

For Colored Girls . . . has been lauded for its innovative use of music, dance, and poetry, as a central part of the dramatic narrative. Her "nonlinear" approach to dramatic structure has been compared by Sandra Richards to the work of playwrights such as Antonin Artaud, Amiri Baraka, and Bertolt Brecht (1991, p. 379). At the same time, the play has been controversial because of its frank discussion of social problems within the African-American community. Despite the controversy that greeted For Colored Girls . . ., Shange has continued over the past two decades to explore social issues relevant to the role of race and gender in the United States.

Shange has been the recipient of numerous awards for her literary work, among them: an Obie Award in 1977 for For Colored Girls . . .; a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry for Three Pieces (1981); a Guggenheim Fellowship (1981); and, an Obie Award for her 1980 adaptation of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. Educated at Barnard College and the University of Southern California, Shange has taught at several colleges and universities, including Mills College, Rice University, and the University of Houston.

Sources:

Elizabeth Brown, "Ntozake Shange," in the Dictionary of Literary Biography (vol. 38): Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, eds. T. M. Davis and T. Harris (1985), 240-250.

Linda Metzger, et al., Black Writers: A Selection of Sketches from Contemporary Authors (1989), 518-523.

Sandra L. Richards, "Ntozake Shange," in African American Writers, eds., Valerie Smith, et al. (1991), 379-393.

For further resources for the study of Ntozake Shange, see the exhibit bibliography.

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