Photo of Jeffrey St Mary

Ntozake Shangepioneer poet, novelist and playwright whose choreopoem, "For the colorful girls who thought about suicide / When the rainbow is Enuf", helped generations of women of color to discover their voice, died, learned the Star Tribune.

Shange, 70, had several strokes in recent years. But she had recently improved, creating new works, doing readings and being celebrated for her work.

She died Saturday night in her sleep at an assistance center in Bowie, Maryland, where she was living.

"Zake was an extravagant and fulfilling woman, and she left quickly without suffering," said Ifa Bayeza, his sister who is also a playwright and theater artist. "It's a huge loss for the world. I do not think there is a day on the planet where there is not a young woman who finds herself through the words of my sister. "

"For Colored Girls," which introduced choreopoem into the dictionary, is a series of poems interspersed with love and loss, joy, and pain. They were brought together in a show that opened off Broadway in 1975 and Broadway in 1976. It has been steadily produced since then, including an exceptional staging by Penumbra's artistic director, Sarah Bellamy, and its theater founder. Lou Bellamy, which has just closed at the St. Paul Theater.

His passage marks "a major change in the cosmos" Sarah Bellamy said Saturday. "Ntozake Shange has invited us to marvel at the resilience and power that women of color exploit to survive in a hostile world. She invited us to practice the ritual of loving ourselves. "

His father explained that because of the commercialization of Broadway production, some people had misnamed "For Colored Girls" as being anti-masculine. "Pro-feminine and anti-masculine are not the same thing," he said.

Shange has written more than a dozen other pieces, although none has reached the "For Colored Girls" level of success. A writer and prolific artist, she has also written novels and poetry books.

Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, Shange comes from an accomplished family. His father, Paul T. Williams, was a surgeon. His mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work. In addition to Bayeza, better known for her play "The Ballad of Emmett Till", she is survived by her sister Bisa Williams, a career diplomat who has been US ambassador to Niger; and his brother Paul T. Williams, Jr., executive director of the board of the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York.

Among his survivors are his daughter Savannah Shange, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, and granddaughter Harriet Shange Watkins.

Bayeza recalled that she knew that she wanted to become a kindergarten writer because of her older sister.

She remembered that she had come home, delighted to learn that they were writing their names to the other students. Bayeza, who had been educated by a cousin, already knew how to do it. So she showed it to her, printing her name in capital letters – big, tall sticks.

She recalled that Shange, who was then 7 or 8 years old, looked at her and said, "It's not a writing, it's a writing." "The words looked like dancing off the page. And I said, "Oh, my God, that's what I want to do." It's such a wealth, such a drama and beauty that all dance far and wide. That's what she went on with her life. "