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Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed play is "For the Colored Girls Who Thought of Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf", was nominated in 1975 to Tony Awards. She was 70 years old.
Shange's "For Colored Girls" describes the racism, sexism, violence and rape suffered by seven black women. He has influenced generations of progressive thinkers, from architect #MeToo Tarana Burke to playwright Lynn Nottage, Pulitzer Prize winner. After learning of Shange's death, Nottage called him "our poet / playwright warrior".
Savannah Shange, professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said Saturday that her mother had died in an assisted living center in Bowie, Maryland. She had suffered a series of strokes in 2004.
"She pleaded for, and in fact embodied, the continuing struggle of black women and girls to live with dignity and respect in the context of systemic racism, sexism and oppression," Savannah Shange said.
"For Colored Girls" is an intertwined series of poetic monologues set to music – Shange coined the form of a "choreopoem" for him – by African American women, each identified only by a color that she door.
Shange used idiosyncratic punctuation and non-standard, unconventional spellings in his work. One of his characters shouts, "I'm going to raise my voice / scream & scream / & break objects and drive the engine / will reveal all the secrets of your adventure to your face.
He played about 750 performances on Broadway – only the second play of an African-American woman after "A Raisin in the Sun" – and was turned into a feature film by Tyler Perry with Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington and Janet Jackson.
Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, she graduated from Barnard College and a Masters degree from the University of Southern California. His father, Dr. Paul T. Williams, was a surgeon. His mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work. She then took a new Zulu name: Ntozake means "She who comes with her own business" and Shange means "She who walks like a lion".
"For Colored Girls" opened at the Public Theater in downtown Manhattan. Shange, then aged 27, was one of the women. The New York Times critic has described it as "extraordinary and wonderful" and "very humiliating but inspiring for a white man." The Shange an Obie Award earned him a second prize in 1981 for his adaptation of "Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht at the Public Theater.
The other 15 pieces of Shange include "A Photograph: A Study of Cruelty" (1977), "Boogie Woogie Landscapes" (1977), "Spell No. 7" (1979) and "Black and White Two Dimensional Planes" (1979). ).
His list of published works includes 19 collections of poems, six novels, five children's books and three books of essays. Some of his novels are "Sassafrass, Cypress, and Indigo" (1982) and "Some Sing, Some Cry" with his sister, Ifa Bayeza. His collections of poetry include "I Live in Music" (1994) and "The Sweet Breath of Life: A Poetic Narrative of the African-American Family" (2004). She appeared in an episode of "Transparent" and contributed to the narrative of the 2002 documentary "Standing in the shadow of Motown".
She has worked with black theater companies such as the Lorraine Hansberry Theater in San Francisco; the New Freedom Theater in Philadelphia; Crossroads Theater Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey; St. Louis Black Rep; The Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota; and the Ensemble Theater in Houston, Texas.
Shange has taught at Brown University, Rice University, Villanova University, DePaul University, Prairie View University and the University. Sonoma State. She has also taught at Yale, Howard, at New York University, among others.
In addition to his daughter and sister, Shange is survived by his sister Bisa Williams, his brother Paul T. Williams Jr. and a granddaughter, Harriet Shange-Watkins.
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