Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shangeis an American playwright, and poet. As a self-proclaimed black feminist, she addresses issues relating to race and feminism in much of her work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 October 1948
CityTrenton, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
maintain milton people references shakespeare spencer
White people use their literature to maintain culture. That's why you find references to Milton and Spencer and Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky in contemporary novels.
If anything is life-changing, being the descendant of a slave is.
leaving south
I've never thought of leaving the South, never.
world novel whole-world
Novels allow me to create a whole world.
sweet nice rip
i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up
wall want terrible
I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.
pain kindness confused
The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
rip nice niceness
nice is such a rip-off.
bizarre ordinariness
in our ordinaryness we are most bizarre.
people feelings our-society
Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable.
sympathy sorry apology
one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.
teenager writing thinking
I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .
space manners disappear
When words & manners leave you no space for yourself make very personal very clear & your obstructions will join you or disappear.
soul spirit separation
my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender