Sing a Black girl's song : the unpublished work of Ntozake Shange

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Title:

Sing a Black girl's song : the unpublished work of Ntozake Shange

Author:

Shange, Ntozake, author.

ISBN:

9780306828515

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 463 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm

Contents:

Early life -- Early poems -- Early vignettes -- Dark rooms -- Plays -- Later poems and short fiction -- Critical essays.

Subject Term:

American poetry -- 20th century.

American drama -- 20th century.

African American women authors -- 20th century.

Genre:

Added Author:

Summary:

"In the late 60s, Ntozake Shange was a young student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school's literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018, Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know it. Sing a Black Girl's Song is a new posthumous collection of unpublished works from throughout the life of this seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf..., travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on "The Couch" opposite Shange's therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girl's' international success. Sing a Black Girl's Song houses the literary rebel's politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life, and is a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time"--

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	811.54 SHA	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	811.54 SHA	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

GMA 's 15 Spectacular New Books to Read in September

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Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, curated by National Book Award winner Imani Perry with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Tarana Burke.

In the late '60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school's literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018, Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know them, each verse, dance, and song a love letter to Black women and girls, and the community at large.

Sing a Black Girl's Song is a new posthumous collection of Shange's unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf..., travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on "The Couch" opposite Shange's therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girls' international success. Sing a Black Girl's Song houses, in their original form, the literary rebel's politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life. Sing a Black Girl's Song is the continuation of a literary tradition that has bolstered generations of writers and a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time.

Author Notes

Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton, New Jersey on October 18, 1948. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1970 and a master's degree in American studies from the University of Southern California in 1973. She adopted her African name while in graduate school.

She wrote 15 plays, 19 collections of poetry, six novels, five children's books, and three essay collections. Her choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, opened on Broadway in 1976 and received an Obie Award. She also received an Obie in 1981 for her adaptation of Bertold Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children. Her trilogy, Three Pieces, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry in 1981. She died on October 27, 2018 at the age of 70.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Previously unseen writing from an essential Black author. Shange is perhaps best known for her Obie Award--winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. But in addition to being a playwright, she was also a poet, a novelist, and a diarist, and when she died in 2018, she left behind a wealth of unpublished work. Harvard professor Imani Perry searched through these archives and chose the essays, poems, short stories, and plays presented in this collection. Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement and bestselling author, offers a foreword in which she explains how "Shange's words gave me language for my own experiences with trauma and love." Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1948, the writer would ultimately change her name and become a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement. In some of these pieces, Shange offers glimpses of her family--well-educated, financially well off, and keenly aware of racial difference. She describes a voracious love of reading that encompassed everything from Nancy Drew to Giovanni's Room as well as the process of discovering the voice that begins to emerge in her early poems. Those acquainted with the author will see familiar themes emerge as she engages with colonialism, code switching, white supremacy, liberation politics, sexism, sexual violence, and collective trauma. She writes of desire and despair and revolution and Black joy using language and imagery that she was taught to hide from white people. In a series of short vignettes Perry gathers into a chapter called "Dark Rooms," Shange speaks candidly of her struggles with mental health and her years in psychoanalysis, and she insists that therapy made her a better writer. Several plays, only one of which has been performed, are presented here. Shange continued writing and experimenting right up until her death, and the last section of this book contains poems and prose she produced between 1996 and 2018. The literary value of these works extends far beyond the insight they offer into Shange's life and artistic career. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Foreword	xv
Introduction	xvii
Editor's Note	xxiii
Early Life	1
Ellie, Who Is My Mother	3
Ellie, Who Is My Mother II	5
The Silk Road	7
St. Louis	10
Coming of Age as a Writer	14
They Are Safe for Now	19
Early Poems	21
Untitled #1	23
Untitled #2	24
Untitled #3	25
Untitled #4	26
Untitled #5	27
Brown hands	28
To all interested brothers	29
The receiving line	30
Easy rider see what you done done	32
On getting my new self together	34
For sapphire	36
R&b chorale	37
Blk folks, it's this thing calk love	39
My man & some boy	43
A banjo	45
Dark phrases	49
I want so much	53
Untitled #6	54
A scarlet woman	55
Scarlet woman	56
On marion brown	57
Untitled #7	58
Bonakele	59
Untitled #8	60
Untitled #9	61
Untitled #10	62
What we were abt on a dismal Saturday night in the city or catchin up with ourselves all in all	63
On malcolm x	65
To become a more discerning self	67
Sterile eviction	68
Untitled #11	70
For pedro	71
Charlotte 'n philip	73
Untitled #12	74
For me on the lady's birthday	75
Oshun's daughter	77
Sing her rhythms	80
Early Vignettes	81
Mabel	83
Arlene Francis Show	85
Geoffrey Holder	86
Three Weeks Ago, Tuesday	89
Dark Rooms	95
The Dark Room	97
The Angriest Patient	99
The Couch	101
Plays	105
Mother Courage and Yvette	107
Daddy Says: A Play	110
Guess What?	117
The Lizard Series	124
Lavender Lizards & Lilac Landmines: Layla's Dream, a Theater Piece	261
Later Poems and Short Fiction	343
Grey matters…	345
As long as i am me	348
the mystery of a black hole is its density / flying in the limbs of eleo pomare	349
Man fell out on subway train / slumped down	352
Two evangelical church on top each other	353
Girl with microphone on bottom steps	354
Boys with hands behind necks	355
Lady with freckles & cigarettes	356
Pregnant lady reading by window	357
Piano mantle piece	358
Flowered wallpaper, straw hat & jesus	359
Girl on the porch	360
2 babies, 2 young men & girl on porch	361
Nana & two toddlers	362
Playin' no matter what	363
Naked pregnant woman on rooftop	364
Girl in front of cuba sign / hands clasped	366
Wake up black man	367
Black man cryin'	368
The dancin series	369
Some musicians tell me "there's no work"	370
Aqui me quedo	371
Nana in chair / white hair	372
dizzy	373
when the wind blows in the ghetto	374
grandmother's bones	375
Others who have not grown accustomed to this place	376
Whitewash	378
Fall, Chicago, 1959	383
MBJ	386
Critical Essays	425
Borders	427
Lost in language & sound a cnoreoessay	431
Acknowledgments	459

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Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

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