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
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.