About the Author

Ntozake Shange is a renowned playwright, poet, and novelist. Born Paulette Williams in 1948, she received her Bachelor’s degree from Barnard College and her Master’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her works include the Broadway-Produced and Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Betsey Brown, Liliane, and Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

"These powerfully swinging, jabbing, lamenting, testifying, and protesting poems. . . coalesce in a galvanizing, timely, and timeless flow of creativity, valor, compassion, and wisdom."
*Booklist Review*

“Acclaimed poet, playwright, and novelist Shange, takes readers on a kaleidoscopic journey through black womanhood in her first selected volume.The poems showcase vibrant narratives of black women who are neither solely saints nor sinners.”

 
*Publisher’s Weekly Starred Review*

“Shange returns with powerful new poems… drawn from the daily realities of black life. No poet since Langston Hughes has insisted so forcefully on black people’s right to simply be…” 
*Washington Post*

“Vibrant enough to leave a mark. . . . Shange parses the beauty in cultural variation, music, womanhood, urban life and language.”
*New York magazine*

“A revelation . . Shange is as fearless as ever in poems that reveal our humanity and pain.” 
— Essence