Ntozake Shange

• Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey to Paul T. Williams (namesake), a surgeon, and Eloise Williams, a psychiatric social worker and educator. The oldest of four children of an upper middle class family.
  

• Moved to a then, racially segregated St. Louis at the age of eight (1956/57). Lived there for five years and enjoyed music, dance, art, literature, and opera. Was even bussed to a German-American school where she suffered blatant racism as a part of the Brown versus Board of Education decision.
  

• As a part of a rich intellectual family, she was an avid reader of great authors to include Jean Genet, Herman Melville, and Langston Hughes. She also came in contact with great musicians and singers like Dizzy Gillespie, Chuck Berry, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Josephine Baker, all friends of her parents. W.E.B. DuBois was also a family visitor.
  

• Returned to New Jersey at age thirteen (1961/62) where she completed high school and became increasingly aware of the inequities of the American society on black females.
  

• Began at Bernard College in 1966 at the age of 18. A year later, attempted suicide after a recent separation from her law school husband and becoming consumed with a sense of bitterness and deep alienation. She actually had made a series of attempts at suicide to include: sticking her head in an oven, drinking chemicals, slashing her wrist, taking an overdose of Valium, and driving her Volvo into the Pacific...an outlet for her rage against a limiting society?
  

• Earned a bachelor's degree with honors in American studies from Barnard College in 1970. Earned a master's degree in American studies in 1973 from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.
  

• In 1971 decided to take an African name: Ntozake means "she who comes with her own things, and Shange means "who walks like a lion." This change occurred as a mechanism to reinforce her inner strength and to redirect her life.
  

• Taught humanities, women's studies, and Afro-American studies from 1972-1975 at Sonoma State College, Mills College, and University of California Extension. During the same period, she was dancing and reciting poetry with the Third World Collective, Raymond Sawyer's Afro-American Dance Company; West Coast Dance Works; and her own company which was then called For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide.
  

• In 1975 moved to New York which was facilitated by the production of her choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975).
  

• During the long run of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, Shange was an artist in residence for the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a creative writing instructor at City College of New York.
  

• She has had several volumes published: Sassafras: A Novella (1977); Nappy Edges, a book of poems (1978); and three pieces (1981), a book which contains three theatre pieces. A number of her short stories appeared in such publications as Yardbird Lives, the Little Magazine, Spell #7, The Black Scholar, Ms. Magazine, Midnight Birds, and The American Rag; her poems were published in Black Maria, Black Heights, The Black Scholar, Yakity Yak and others.
  

• Between the years of 1976 to 1980 she gave numerous substantial readings and lectures at such places as Yale University, University of North Dakota, Howard University, New York University, Detroit Art Institute, Southern University, and others. Also, in 1977, Shange married her second husband, David Murray, a musician.
  

• In 1992 she received unfavorable reviews for her poetry performance, "The Space That Love Demands" in New Brunswick, N.J. and at the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre in San Francisco.
  

• 1994 - Shange participated in the Black Theatre Network's Annual Convention in Chicago. She sat on panels which dealt with black women in the theatre.
  

• Recently, Shange has written a children's book, I Live in Music in 1994 and received favorable reviews for her direction of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf at the Ensemble Theatre in Houston, Texas. Her latest book was published in 1994 entitled Lilliane: Resurrection of the Daughter.
  

• She has also been working a play with Ladysmith Black Mambazo opening at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.
  

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  FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF

• Opened at the Studio Rivbea, New York on July 7, 1975; New Federal Theatre, New York in March 1976; ...Public Theatre, New York on June 1 1976; ...Booth Theatre (Broadway) on September 15, 1976.
  

• Changed Shange from a relative unknown, though she had written, published and read across the country, to an instant success. the play consisted of a series of twenty poems which had been nurtured for several years.
  

• The poems had been acted out by seven women named women in brown, yellow, orange, red, purple, green, blue. The choreopoem could be categorized as a drama of self-celebration because all-too-human black women are presented who are preoccupied with living and surviving. It is also filled with the outcries of women who have been hurt.
  

• On one level, the work deals with the physical and emotional abuse that black women experience at the hands of insensitive black men. On another level, however, it deals with the black woman's ability to survive even after being knocked down repeatedly.
  

• The play is a tribute to black women who strive for and develop a sense of self. Shange commends black women who refuse to despair in the face of loneliness, rejection, pain, and rape.
  

• The choreopoem has been praised by numerous critics, yet it shows signs of weakness in terms of depth of content and character development. Toussaint L'Ouverture is the only black male represented positively in the choreopoem. Most other black men are represented as having serious personality defects; they are portrayed as beast who will lie, seduce, beat, rape, and abandon women.
  

• The women are not sufficiently developed as to question the socio- psychological reasons behind the behavior of the men, nor do the women seem to question why they allow themselves to be abused.
  

• Even though the work presents a fragmented view of black life, its poetry is poignant and it appeals to women who have experienced more pain than joy at the hands of their men. Shange says that the women are not alone in their suffering.
  

• The play has been and still is extremely popular. It has been produced at the National Theatre in Kingston, West Indies; Teatro do BNH in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Royalty Theatre in London, Wayne State University's Black Theatre Program, The University of Michigan Theatre, and Eastern Michigan University students.
  

• For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf has earned Shange the 1977 Obie award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Audelco Award, and the Mademoiselle Award. It was also nominated for the Tony, Grammy, and Emmy awards.
  

"Too much of it is in the same key --overwrought and overacted. There are not enough variations of tone and style, and it is concerned very much with the narrow and subjective spectrum of human experience." ... "It could be said that a white man has no grounds to judge a play by and about black women, and that may be so, and for what it may mean the show had drawn almost unanimous praise from critics and audiences. It was a huge success downtown, and it seems that it will continue as such on Broadway."

"There is some lack of variety in the selection of material; and excess of concern with romance and sex, music and dancing, even considering that the work is about young women. Within that limitation, however, the writing is regularly beautiful and often exquisite."

"Ms. Shange has a good ear for language and a sharp eye for the behavior and customs of black people; there is intelligence at work in Colored Girls, but more important, there is texture, the feel, and raw emotions of the modern black woman who, against great odds, fights for her integrity and her self-respect."

Beaufort, John. "'For Colored Girls.'" Christian Science Monitor, September 24, 1976).

Gussow, Mel. Stage: "'Colored Girls' on Broadway." The New York Times, (September 16, 1976).

Gottfried, Martin. "'Rainbow' Over Broadway." New York Post, (September 16, 1976).

Sanders, Kevin. "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf." WABC-TV7, (September 19, 1976).

Watt, Douglas. "Here's to the Ladies Again." Daily News, (September 16, 1976).