Ntozake Shange, 1948–2018 The playwright who wrote For Colored Girls

In 1976, a play opened on Broadway that was utterly unlike anything seen there before. Ntozake Shange, a black feminist poet and playwright, described her new work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf, as a choreopoem, with spoken verse and dance set to a jazz soundtrack. Its characters, identified only by the colors they wore on stage, delivered searing monologues, written in the free style of contemporary poetry, on the abuse, racism, and struggles experienced by women of color. “i found god in myself,” the Lady in Red declares, “& i loved her/i loved her fiercely.” For Colored Girls ran for 742 performances and inspired a generation of black writers and activists. Shange spoke to “young women who didn’t feel invited into a theater space,” said Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Lynn Nottage, “who suddenly saw representation of themselves in a very honest way.” Shange was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, N.J., and raised in St. Louis, “where she was one of the first black children to integrate into the city’s all-white public schools,” said The Washington Post. Her politically active parents, both medical professionals, “mixed with a crowd that included musicians Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie, as well as writer W.E.B. DuBois.” Shange began to hone her poetic voice at Barnard College in Manhattan, from which she graduated in 1970. Around this time, Shange adopted a Zulu name, said USA Today. Ntozake means “She who comes with her own things,” and Shange “She who walks like a lion.” Shange was 27 years old when For Colored Girls debuted on Broadway—only the second play by a black woman to appear there, following Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. “Her unconventional play was a hit and nominated for a Tony Award,” said The New York Times, although some black critics objected to its unsparing depiction of abuse committed by black men. Shange went on to write 15 plays, 19 poetry collections, six novels, five children’s books, and three essay collections, “an oeuvre all the more remarkable” given her struggles with bipolar disorder and addiction. She remained steadfast in her belief that poetry could change the world. “You have to keep acting like it is enough,” she said in 2013. “You have to keep hoping that it will move the mountain.” ■ November 2, 2018 THE WEEK