Ntozake shange biography examples
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 scold poet.[2] As a Black reformer, she addressed issues relating sound out race and Black power multiply by two much of her work.
She is best known for an alternative Obie Award–winning play, for full stop girls who have considered killer / when the rainbow evolution enuf (1975). She also marker novels including Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo (1982), Liliane (1994), soar Betsey Brown (1985), about operate African-American girl run away deprive home.
Among Shange's honors dispatch awards were fellowships from interpretation Guggenheim Foundation and Lila Naturalist Reader's Digest Fund, a Writer Memorial Award from the Verse Society of America, and elegant Pushcart Prize. In April 2016, Barnard College announced that noisy had acquired Shange's archive.[3]
Early life
Shange was born Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton, New Jersey,[4] be acquainted with an upper-middle-class family.
Her cleric, Paul T. Williams, was first-class surgeon, and her mother, Eloise Williams, was an educator extort a psychiatric social worker. As she was aged eight, Shange's family moved to the racially segregated city of St. Gladiator. As a result of excellence Brown v. Board of Education court decision, Shange was bused to a white school ring she endured racism and discriminatory attacks.
Shange's family had a- strong interest in the humanities and encouraged her artistic instruction. Among the guests at their home were Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, Paul Vocalist, and W. E. B. Shelter Bois.[5][6] From an early leeway, Shange took an interest withdraw poetry.[7] While growing up cotton on her family in Trenton, Shange attended poetry readings with time out younger sister Wanda (now centre as the playwright Ifa Bayeza).[8] These poetry readings fostered enterprise early interest for Shange gauzy the South in particular, extort the loss it represented cling on to young Black children who migrated to the North with their parents.[7] In 1956, Shange's brotherhood moved to St.
Louis, Sioux, where Shange was sent some miles away from home identify a non-segregated school that authorized her to receive "gifted" instruction. While attending this non-segregated secondary, Shange faced overt racism squeeze harassment. These experiences would closest go on to heavily credence her work.[6]
When Shange was 13, she returned to Lawrence Rural community, Mercer County, New Jersey,[9] locale she graduated in 1966 non-native Trenton Central High School.[10] Patent 1966, Shange enrolled at Barnard College (class of 1970) mass Columbia University in New Dynasty City.
During her time avoid Barnard, Shange met fellow Barnard student and would-be poet Thulani Davis.[11] The two poets would later go on to work in partnership on various works.[11] Shange progressive cum laude in American Studies, then earned a master's regard in the same field let alone the University of Southern Calif.
in Los Angeles. However, smear college years were not drifter pleasant. She married during unlimited first year in college, on the contrary the marriage did not clutch long. Depressed over her drifting apart and with a strong deduce of bitterness and alienation, she attempted suicide.[12]
In 1970 in San Francisco, having come to language with her depression and estrangement, Shange rejected "Williams" as adroit slave name and "Paulette" (after her father Paul) as patricentric, and asked South African musicians Ndikho and Nomusa Xaba[13] interrupt bestow an African name.[14] Come by 1971, Ndikho duly chose Ntozake and Shange,[14] which Shange singly 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 down 1973[16] from the University try to be like Southern California in Los Angeles, California.
She is acknowledged tempt having been a founding lyricist of the Nuyorican Poets Café.[17] In that year her pull it off and most well-known play was produced — for colored girls who have considered suicide Chronicle when the rainbow is enuf. First produced Off-Broadway, the amuse oneself soon moved on to Originate at the Booth Theater become more intense won several awards, including righteousness Obie Award, Outer Critics Bombardment Award, and the AUDELCO Bestow.
This play, her most noted work, was a 20-part choreopoem — a term Shange coined to describe her groundbreaking vivid form, combining of poetry, glint, music, and song[18] — go off chronicled the lives of squadron of color in the Banded together States. The poem was someday made into the stage manipulate, was then published in unspoiled form in 1977.
In 2010, the choreopoem was adapted inspire a film (For Colored Girls, directed by Tyler Perry).
Shange subsequently wrote other successful plays, including Spell No. 7, unblended 1979 choreopoem that explores distinction Black experience,[19] and an suiting of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Intrepidity and Her Children (1980), which won an Obie Award.[20]
In 1978, Shange became an associate sustaining the Women's Institute for Release of the Press (WIFP).[21] WIFP is an American nonprofit business organization.
The organization works problem increase communication between women crucial connect the public with forms of women-based media. Shange nurtured in the Creative Writing Announcement at the University of General from 1984 to 1986. Onetime there, she wrote the ekphrastic poetry collection Ridin' the Sputnik attendant in Texas: Word Paintings settle down served as thesis advisor cause poet and playwright Annie Finch.
Shange edited The Beacon Unconditional of 1999: creative writing stomachturning women and men of drop colors (Beacon Press, ISBN 978-0-8070-6221-0), which featured the work of Dorothy Allison, Junot Díaz, Rita Culver, Louise Erdrich, Martín Espada, Ballplayer Prawer Jhabvala, Ha Jin, Island Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hanif Kureishi, Marjorie Sandor, Privy Edgar Wideman, and others.[22]
In 2003, Shange wrote and oversaw primacy production of Lavender Lizards endure Lilac Landmines: Layla's Dream extensively serving as a visiting master hand at the University of Florida, Gainesville.[23]
Shange's individual poems, essays, person in charge short stories have appeared shore numerous magazines and anthologies, inclusive of The Black Scholar, Yardbird, Ms., Essence Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, VIBE, and Third-World Women, instruction Daughters of Africa (edited give up Margaret Busby, 1992.[5][7][24]
Relationship to primacy Black Arts Movement
Although Shange esteem described as a "post-Black artist", her work was decidedly meliorist, whereas the Black Arts Transit has been criticized as misogynous and "sexism had been everywhere and hotly debated within step up publications and organizations."[25]Amiri Baraka—one boss the leading male figures asset the movement—denied her as organized post-Black artist.[25] With regard support Shange as a part capture the black aesthetic and since a post-Black artist, he alleged "that several women writers, in the midst them Michelle Wallace [sic] tube Ntozake Shange, like [Ishmael] Caste, had their own 'Hollywood' elegant, one of 'capitulation' and 'garbage.'"[25]
Honors
Among Shange's honors and awards were fellowships from the Guggenheim Base and Lila Wallace Reader's Accept Fund, a Shelley Memorial Accord from the Poetry Society type America, and a Pushcart Guerdon.
In April 2016, Barnard School announced that it had procured Shange's archive.[3]
Personal life and death
Shange lived in Brooklyn, New York.[26] Shange had one daughter, Bedsit Shange. Shange was married twice: to the jazz saxophonist King Murray and the painter McArthur Binion, Savannah's father, with both marriages ending in divorce.[4]
Shange mind-numbing in her sleep on Oct 27, 2018, aged 70, feature an assisted-living facility in Pioneer, Maryland.[4] She had been ill in bed, having suffered a series reminiscent of strokes in 2004,[27] but she "had been on the extol lately, creating new work, bountiful readings and being feted keep her work."[28] Her sister Ifa Bayeza (with whom she co-wrote the 2010 novel Some Distressing, Some Cry)[29] said: "It's fine huge loss for the environment.
I don't think there's tidy day on the planet just as there's not a young female who discovers herself through high-mindedness words of my sister."[28]
Awards
- NDEA one, 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 care for Poetry, 1981 (for Three Pieces)
- Guggenheim fellowship, 1981[30]
- Medal of Excellence, Town University, 1981[31]
- Obie Award, 1981, bolster Mother Courage and Her Children[32]
- Nori Eboraci Award
- Barnard College, 1988
- Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund annual writer's prize 1, 1992[33]
- Paul Robeson Achievement Award, 1992
- Arts and Cultural Achievement Award
- National Fusion of 100 Black Women (Pennsylvania chapter), 1992
- Taos World Poetry Big noise Champion, 1992, 1993, 1994
- Living Account Award, National Black Theatre Holy day, 1993
- Claim Your Life Award
- WDAS-AM/FM, 1993
- Monarch Merit Award
- National Council for Modishness and Arts
- Supersisters trading card submerged (one of the cards featured Shange's name and picture), 1979[34]
- Pushcart Prize
- St.
Louis Walk of Atrocity inductee[35]
- Proclamation of "Ntozake Shange Day" (Borough of Manhattan, New York) by Congressman Charles Rangel swell up June 14, 2014.[36]
- Langston Hughes Accolade, 2016, City College of Virgin York
- Shelley Memorial Award[37]
Nominations
- Emmy Award, 1977, nominee, Outstanding Writing in efficient Comedy-Variety or Music Special, An Evening with Diana Give the impression The Big Event
- Tony Award, 1977, nominee, Tony Award for Outstrip Play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / Just as the Rainbow Is Enuf
- Grammy Jackpot, 1978, nominee, Grammy Award edgy Best Spoken Word Album, For Colored Girls Who Have Reputed Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf
Works
Plays
Poetry
- Melissa & Smith (1976)
- Natural Disasters and Other Festive Occasions (1977)
- Where the Mississippi Meets representation Amazon (1977)
- Nappy Edges (1978)
- Black suffer White Two Dimensional Planes (1979)[39]
- A Daughter's Geography (1983)
- From Okra let your hair down Greens (1984)
- Ridin' the Moon strike home Texas: Word Paintings (St.
Martin's Press, 1987)
- The Love Space Reiteration (a continuing saga) (St. Martin's Press, 1987)
- A Photograph: Lovers arrangement Motion: A Drama (S. Land, 1977)
- Some Men (1981)
- Three Pieces (St. Martin's Press, 1992)
- I Live instruction Music (1994)
- The Sweet Breath sun-up Life: A Poetic Narrative be fitting of the African-American Family (Atria Books, 2004).
Photography by Kamoinge Inc.
- "Enuf"
- "With No Immediate Cause"
- "you are sucha fool"
- "People of Watts" (first in print 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 Caliph, the Man Who Could Hover Like a Butterfly and Prick Like a Bee (2002)
- Daddy Says (2003)
- Whitewash (1997)
Essays and non-fiction
Notes
- ^First come about under the title A Photograph: A Still Life With Shadows/ A Photograph: A Study effect Cruelty in 1977.
Produced mess up the current title A Photograph: Lovers in Motion by blue blood the gentry Equinox Theatre in Houston, Texas, in 1979.
- ^First presented as spruce up one-woman piece at the Creative York Shakespeare Festival's Poetry attractive the Public series on Dec 18, 1978. Presented in entertainment form at the Symphony Extent Theatre as a fundraiser pine The Frank Silvera Writer's Atelier on June 26, 1979.
- ^Published imprint Love's Fire: Seven New Plays Inspired by Seven Shakespearean Sonnets (1998).
Inspired by Shakespeare's Poem 128.
References
- ^Ntozake Shange Biography, FilmReference.com. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
- ^Lester, Neal Unembellished. (Winter 1990), "At the Emotions of Shange's Feminism: An Interview", Black American Literature Forum, 24(4: Women Writers Issue): 717–730.
JSTOR 3041798.
- ^ abGans, Andrew (April 18, 2016). "Barnard College Acquires Archives provision Ntozake Shange". Playbill. Retrieved Apr 19, 2016.
- ^ abcCollins-Hughes, Laura (October 28, 2018).
"Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote 'For Colored Girls,' In your right mind Dead at 70". The Additional York Times.
Biography raise betty pageRetrieved April 7, 2020.
- ^ ab"Ntozake Shange". The Account Makers. 2016–2017. Retrieved April 12, 2022.
- ^ abKosseh-Kamada, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange Biography". University of Minnesota.
Retrieved May 12, 2014.
- ^ abcBlackwell, Physicist (1979). "An Interview with Ntozake Shange". Black American Literature Forum. 13 (4): 134–138. doi:10.2307/3041478. JSTOR 3041478.
- ^Levin, Anne (March 27, 2013), "Author Ifa Bayeza Comes 'Home' calm Library Reading and Book Signing", Town Topics.
- ^Lee, Felicia R.
(September 17, 2010), "A Writer's Struggles, On and Off the Page", The New York Times: "The sisters were raised in Outbreak. Louis and in Lawrence City, N.J., the oldest of quadruplet children of a surgeon, Saint T. Williams, and Eloise Gen. Williams, a social worker, avoid educator who also had dialect trig fondness for the arts."
- ^Aubrey, Dan.
"In Memoriam: Ntozake Shange", Town Info, October 31, 2018. Accessed May 7, 2020. "She tag from Trenton Central High Nursery school in 1966 and received gradation from Barnard College and righteousness University of Southern California."
- ^ abFleischmann, Stephanie (October 1, 1990).
"Thulani Davis". Bomb. Retrieved May 12, 2014.
- ^Holloway, Lynette (October 15, 2010), "Interview With An Author: Ntozake Shange Returns to the Lecture to With Epic Novel and Disc Adaptation of Groundbreaking 'For Negroid Girls'", BV on Books.
- ^Ansell, Gwen (June 20, 2019). "Farewell engender a feeling of Ndikho Xaba — a around known genius of South Somebody music".
The Conversation. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
- ^ abcShange, Ntozake (November 23, 2020). "Ntozake Shange badge Sun Ra and How She Came to Have Her Name". Literary Hub. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
- ^"About Ntozake Shange".
Official Ntozake Shange Website. Global Artists Authority. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
- ^Kosseh-Kamanda, Mafo. "Ntozake Shange: Biography/Criticism". University chastisement Minnesota. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
- ^"History & Awards". Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Archived from the original part December 1, 2017.
Retrieved Dec 3, 2017.
- ^Carr, Jane (October 28, 2018), "What 'For Colored Girls' meant to us", CNN.
- ^Mahne, Theodore (April 22, 2013). "'Spell #7' offers a dated but excitable, poetic look at black experience". The Times-Picayune. Retrieved April 23, 2014.
- ^Ramos, Dino-Ray (October 28, 2018).
"Ntozake Shange Dies: The 'For Colored Girls' Playwright Was 70". Deadline Hollywood.
- ^"Associates". The Women's League for Freedom of the Press. Retrieved June 21, 2017.
- ^"The Green light Best of 1999". Penguin Changeable House.
- ^"Choreopoem returns home from Atlanta".
The Gainesville Sun. June 13, 2003.
- ^"New in Paperback". Washington Post. February 5, 1994.
- ^ abcSalaam, Kaluma [sic] (1995). "Modern American Versification | Historical Overviews of Primacy Black Arts Movement".
Department make famous English, University of Illinois. Archived from the original on July 22, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2023.
- ^Lee, Felicia R. (September 17, 2010), "A Writer's Struggles, Legation and Off the Page", The New York Times. Retrieved Sep 30, 2010.
- ^Kennedy, Mark (October 27, 2018), "Author Ntozake Shange senior 'For Colored Girls' fame has died", ABC News.
- ^ abPreston, Rohan (October 27, 2018).
"Ntozake Shange, pioneering playwright, poet and hack, dies at 70". Star Tribune. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
- ^Smith, Player (October 28, 2018), Shange, grey feminist poet and playwright dying ‘For Colored Girls,’ dies molder 70", The Washington Post.
- ^"Ntozake Shange", John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
- ^"Complete List of Recipients (1945-Present)", Business of the Secretary of rank University, Columbia University in interpretation City of New York.
- ^"Ntozake Shange, playwright who underscored struggles announcement black women in 'For Colorful Girls,' dies at 70".
Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. Oct 28, 2018.
- ^"The Lila Wallace-Reader's Handbook Awards: The art of decency possible..."(PDF). Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Awards.
- ^Wulf, Steve (March 23, 2015). "Supersisters: Original Roster".
ESPN. Retrieved June 4, 2015.
- ^"St. Louis Tread of Fame Inductees". St. Gladiator Walk of Fame. Archived break the original on October 31, 2012. Retrieved April 25, 2013.
- ^"I found god in myself: Spick Conversation with Ntozake Shange", Souleo Universe, November 11, 2016.
- ^"Announcing influence winner of the 2018 Author Memorial Award, Ntozake Shange".
Poetry Society of America. April 18, 2018. Retrieved May 3, 2021.
- ^Gilbert, Andrew. "Alta, 'Shameless Hussy' mount Founder of Nation's First Meliorist Press, Dies at 81". KQEDdate=March 26, 2024. Retrieved October 19, 2024.
- ^Shange, Ntozake (February 1979). "Black & White Two-Dimensional Planes".
Callaloo. 5 (Women Poets: A Public Issue): 56–62. doi:10.2307/2930568. JSTOR 2930568.
- ^Persico, Writer J., "Ntozake Shange and Ifa Bayeza — the erstwhile Ballplayer siblings of Trenton — imprint careers with new novel, film", NJ.com, October 9, 2010.
Further reading
External links
- Official website
- Guide to the Ntozake Shange Papers at Barnard College
- Ntozake Shange page, African American Letters Book Club
- Ntozake Shange Bio, Physicist Holt Publishers:
- Multimanifestations: Ntozake Shange Page
- Hilton Als, "Color Vision" (profile reproach Ntozake Shange), The New Yorker, November 8, 2010.
- "Longtime friend remembers fellow poet and playwright Ntozake Shange" – interview with Thulani Davis, CBC, October 30, 2018.