Shange’s potent words remain eternal. May her spirit, which she once described as “too ancient to understand the separation of soul and gender,” rest in peace and power. May the artistic tools she left behind for so many of us continue to cement her legacy and “move us to the ends of our own rainbows.”
Tag: Ntozake Shange
National Poetry Month: “Have You Ever Tried To Hide?”
The iconic feminist poet Pat Parker was known not only for her printed work but also for her powerful performances. Parker’s activism with the Black Panther Party and the Black Women’s Revolutionary Council in the 1960s shaped her poetic voice. Her poetry, rooted in the African American oral tradition of call and response, grapples with […]
For Fans of Ntozake Shange, Finally, A Memoir
Ntozake Shange, feminist author of the critically acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who’ve considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, as well as numerous poetry collections and novels (most recently the 600-page Some Sing, Some Cry, co-written with her sister Ifa Bayeza), gets personal, political and lyrical in her latest work, Lost in Language and […]
Am I The Only Feminist Who Liked Perry’s “For Colored Girls”?
I doubt that I am, and judging from the mostly black female audience that filled the theater where I watched Tyler Perry’s film adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s celebrated “choreopoem,” I believe the word-of-mouth among black women is that Perry got more things right than wrong in presenting the classic narrative on black women’s blues. Other […]
For Colored Boys Who Have Survived Sexual Abuse, Is “For Colored Girls” Enuf?
On November 5, Oprah Winfrey aired the first of a two-part episode on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Two hundred men stood in the audience, each holding a photograph taken at the age their innocence was stolen by the priest, babysitter, or parent who molested them. Filmmaker Tyler Perry was among them, just two […]
For Colored Girls: The Reviews Are In
The 70’s saw an efflorescence of works by and about African American women, spurred by the overall women’s movement. Black women have always been telling their stories, whether in formal literature–see Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl from 1861 or Ann Petry’s The Street from 1946–or around kitchen tables or in […]
Beyond “For Colored Girls”: The Quiz
The recent release of Tyler Perry’s film For Colored Girls has sparked a resurgence of interest in Ntozake Shange’s work. But let’s not forget about all the other incredible African American women who have shaped our view of the world through their plays, poetry, prose and dramatic performance. How well do you know these trailblazing […]
For Colored Girls, When One Blog Post Is Not Enuf
We have had such a tremendous interest among our bloggers in Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls that we’ve posted a number of their analyses, both before and after the film’s premiere this past Friday. It’s not hard to understand why the hoopla: Ntozake Shange’s beloved For Colored Girls, Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, […]
The Good News: Madea’s Not a Colored Girl
The bad news is you can’t escape the long arm of Madea in the new film For Colored Girls. Tyler Perry’s Madea, whose righteous indignation and compulsive moralizing are warped with tired tropes of Judeo-Christianism, provides the backdrop for interpreting the characters in his film version of the Ntozake Shange “choreopoem”. Phylicia Rashad’s character Gilda (a […]
Peek At the Week
Welcome to our new weekly events calendar, where I’ll give you a rundown of all the fabulous feminist and progressive (and sometimes cheesy pop culture) events that I would be attending if I could be in multiple places at once and had an inheritance. The first and most important event this week is Election Day, […]