Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams into an upper middle-class African American family. Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother a psychiatric social worker. As a child, cultural icons such as Miles Davies, W.E.B. DuBois, and Chuck Berry were frequent guests of her parents. Shange lived in the racially segregated city of St. Louis between the ages of 8 and 13, where she experienced racial attacks for attending a white school. She went on to Barnard College and the University of Southern California, receiving both a BA and MA in American Studies. While at college, Shange entered into a short-lived marriage and became depressed. In a bid to overcome her depression and feelings of alienation, she changed her name to Ntozake (in Zulu "she who comes with her own things") Shange (in Zulu "who walks like a lion").
In 1975, Shange moved to New York City and became the founding poet of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She would go on to a successful triple career as an educator, performer/director, and writer whose work drew heavily on her experiences of being a Black female in America. In 1976, her first and most famous play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf, was produced. A unique blend of poetry, music, dance and drama called a “choreopoem", it premiered off-Broadway before moving to Broadway's Booth Theatre.
Shange’s next productions included A Photograph: A Study of Cruelty (1977), Boogie Woogie Landscapes (1977), Spell No. 7 (1979), and Black and White Two Dimensional Planes (1979). Her poetry collections include Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems (2017), I Live in Music (1994), Three Pieces (1992), A Daughter's Geography (1983), and Some Men (1981).
Shange died in her sleep in October 2018.
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