Ntozake Shange

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Ntozake Shange (1978)

Ntozake Shange (birth name: Paulette L. Williams ; born October 18, 1948 in Trenton , New Jersey ; † October 27, 2018 in Bowie , Maryland ) was an American poet , playwright , dancer , actress , musician and director . She has received several awards for her feminist works, such as the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf , and in 1981 she received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry for Three Pieces .

Life

The daughter of a surgeon and a social worker in a psychiatric clinic studied American studies at Barnard College after attending school and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Arts (BA American Studies). She completed a subsequent postgraduate degree in American Studies at the University of Southern California in 1973 with a Master of Arts (MA American Studies) and also studied music and dance. Already during her studies in 1971 she took the name Ntozake Shange from isiZulu , which means “the one who comes with her own things” (Ntozake) and “one who walks like a lion” (Shange).

After completing her bachelor's degree, she became a teacher of English language , creative writing and drama in 1972 and taught first at Trenton State College, then from 1973 to 1975 at California State College in Sonoma and briefly in 1975 at City College of New York . She was then a teacher at Medgar Evers Community College and Douglass College before she became a lecturer at Rutgers University in 1978 .

During this time she also worked as an actress and appeared in not only theaters in California and New York City , but also in television shows such as Straight Talk (1976), Sunday (1977), Black Journal (1977) and An Evening with Diana Ross ( 1977), for which she was nominated for an Emmy Award . In addition, she began her writing career and had her first great success with her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf , for which she received the Obie Award in 1977 . Together with her generation companions Alice Walker , Toni Morrison and Toni Cade Bambara , she achieved a recognized place in US literature for the first time for African-American authors in the 1970s .

In 1979 she directed various plays at the New York Shakespeare Festival such as The Mighty Gents and Tribute to Sojourner Truth . In 1980 she was honored with another Obie Award for an adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's mother Courage and her children . For the volume of poetry Three Pieces she received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry in 1981 and was also nominated for a Grammy Award and a Tony Award . In 1981 she received a Guggenheim grant and a further grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to support her writing activities financially . In 1983 Shange became a lecturer at Rice University .

In addition to her own publications, her short stories , articles and poems have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times and TV Guide , but also in anthologies such as The Pushcart Press II (1977), Califia: The California Poetry (1979), Anthology of Third World Women Writers (1980) and Daughters of Africa (1992).

In 1994 she was awarded the Humanitas Prize for the script for the short film Whitewash and also won the audience award at the Austin Film Festival as a narrator in the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown .

With her untraditional and unconventional style, she shaped the works of younger Afro-American authors such as that of Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks . Ntozake Shange died in October 2018 at the age of 70.

Publications

Dramas

  • 1975: for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf
  • 1977: Photograph, A: Lovers In Motion II
  • 1997: Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon
  • 1978: From Okra to Greens
  • 1979: Black and White Two-Dimensional Planes
  • 1979: Boogie Woogie Landscapes
  • 1979: Spell # 7
  • 1980: Mother Courage And Her Children
  • 1981: Dreamed Dwellings
  • 1981: It Has Not Always Been This Way
  • 1982: Daughter's Geography II
  • 1982: Dancin 'Novel, The: Sassafrass, Cypress, & Indigo
  • 1983: Betsey Brown
  • 1983: Educating Rita
  • 1987: Three Views of Mt Fuji
  • 1989: Daddy Says
  • 1992: I Heard Eric Dolphy in His Eyes
  • 1992: The Love Space Demands
  • 1994: Resurrection Of The Daughter: Liliane
  • 1998: Hydraulics Phat Like Mean
  • 2001: Liliane -Everytime My Lil WorldSeems Blue, I Just Haveta Look At You And Learn eye-hand Co-ordination

Novels and volumes of poetry

  • Sassafrass: A Novella (1977)
  • Nappy Edges (poems, 1978)
  • Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel (Roman, 1982)
  • Melissa & Smith: A Story (1983)
  • A Daughter's Geography: Poetry (1983)
  • Matrilineal Poems (1983)
  • See No Evil: Prefaces, Essays, and Accounts, 1976-1983 (1984)
  • Betsy Brown (Novel, 1985).

in German language:

  • Black Sisters , original title Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo: A Novel , 1984, ISBN 3-499-15344-0

Web links

Commons : Ntozake Shange  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. Entry at filmreference.com
  2. Ntozake Shange, pioneering playwright, poet and novelist, dies on October 70, 27, 2018 (English).;