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
dream blood draws
our dreams draw blood from old sores.
emotional average ideas
I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive. ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.
alive being-a-woman colored-girls
Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.
girl emotional thinking
When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.
creativity creation
Creation is everything you do. Make something.
women magic tiaras
Where there is a woman there is magic.
girl suicide moving
And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.
girl women born
right now being born a girl is to be born threatened ...
writing wind feet
I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.
girl writing thinking
I write for young girls of color, for girls who don't even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think.
people use language
I'm a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people's lives.
girl song struggle
somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.
inspiring fall moon
Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.
love god healing
i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely