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Poet and playwright Ntozake Shange passed away over the weekend at the age of 70. According to her family, she passed away peacefully in her sleep.
‘To our extended family and friends, it is with sorrow that we inform you that our loved one, Ntozake Shange, passed away peacefully in her sleep in the early morning of October 27, 2018. Memorial information/details will follow at a later date. The family of Ntozake Shange.’
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Shange is recognized as one of the most influential writers of our time. Her body of work includes The Love Space Demands, Nappy Edges, Cypress & Indigo, Sassafrass, Liliane and Some Sing, Some Cry. However, she will forever be known for her genre-shifting choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, which was published in 1975.
In 2010, Tyler Perry brought For Colored Girls to the big screen. The choreopoem delved into the issues that impact women in general and women of color in particular. The film later on won NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture, NAACP Image Award For Outstanding Motion Picture and BET Award for Best Movie.
Since then Shange published six novels, five children’s books nineteen poetry collections and three collections of essays. Here are 8 quotes from Shange’s work below:
1. I found God in myself and I loved her. I loved her fiercely.
2. Where there is a woman, there is magic.
3. 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.
4. Creation is everything you do. Make something.
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5. 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.
6. Let her be born. Let her be born & handled warmly
7. Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet.
8. my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face
my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face
my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face
my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face
my love is too Saturday nite to have thrown back on my face
my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face
my love is too music to have thrown back on my face