New Releases by Ntozake Shange

''Celebrates the capacity to master pain and betrayals with wit sister-sharing, reckless daring, and flight and forgetfulness if necessary'' Toni Cade Bambara ''The force of Shange''s writing seemed to say, "Fuck the old rule of not airing your female business in front of colored men, white people, let alone the rest of the world." You own the copyright on your life'' Hilton Als ''Encompassing, it seems, every feeling and experience a woman has ever had'' New Yorker ''Totally extraordinary'' New York Times i will raise my voice / & scream & holler / & break things & race the engine / & tell all yr secrets bout yrself to yr face From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp''s Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange''s words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century. First published in 1975 when it was praised by The New Yorker for encompassing...every feeling and experience a woman has ever had, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read and performed for generations to come. Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vivid and powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world. With an introduction by Bernardine Evaristo A W&N Essential

Typescript, dated February 2022. Heavily marked with colored pens throughout. Used by The New York Public Library''s Theatre on Film and Tape Archive on June 3, 2022, when videotaping the stage production at the Booth Theatre, New York, N.Y. The production opened on April 20, 2022, and was directed and choreographed by Camille A. Brown.

In her first posthumous work, the revered poet crafts a personal history of Black dance and captures the careers of legendary dancers along with her own rhythmic beginnings. Many learned of Ntozake Shange’s ability to blend movement with words when her acclaimed choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf made its way to Broadway in 1976, eventually winning an Obie Award the following year. But before she found fame as a writer, poet, performer, dancer, and storyteller, she was an untrained student who found her footing in others’ classrooms. Dance We Do is a tribute to those who taught her and her passion for rhythm, movement, and dance. After 20 years of research, writing, and devotion, Ntozake Shange tells her history of Black dance through a series of portraits of the dancers who trained her, moved with her, and inspired her to share the power of the Black body with her audience. Shange celebrates and honors the contributions of the often unrecognized pioneers who continued the path Katherine Dunham paved through the twentieth century. Dance We Do features a stunning photo insert along with personal interviews with Mickey Davidson, Halifu Osumare, Camille Brown, and Dianne McIntyre. In what is now one of her final works, Ntozake Shange welcomes the reader into the world she loved best.

New edition available. Search ISBN 9780807021446. Acclaimed artist Ntozake Shange offers this delightfully eclectic tribute to black cuisine as a food of life that reflects the spirit and history of a people. With recipes such as "Cousin Eddie''s Shark with Breadfruit" and "Collard Greens to Bring You Money," Shange instructs us in the nuances of a cuisine born on the slave ships of the Middle Passage, spiced by the jazz of Duke Ellington, and shared by all members of the African Diaspora. Rich with personal memories and historical insight, If I Can Cook/You Know God Can is a vivid story of the migration of a people, and the cuisine that marks their living legacy and celebration of taste.

NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work From the poet, novelist, and cultural icon behind the award-winning and extraordinary Broadway play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, comes “a kaleidoscopic journey through black womanhood” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a moving bilingual collection of new and beloved poems. In this stirring collection of more than sixty original and selected poems in both English and Spanish, Ntozake Shange shares her utterly unique, unapologetic, and deeply emotional writing that has made her one of the most iconic literary figures of our time. With a clear, raw, and affecting voice, Shange draws from her experience as a feminist black woman in American to craft groundbreaking poetry about pain, beauty, and color. In the bestselling tradition of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, Wild Beauty is more than a poetry collection; it is an exquisite call to action for a new generation of women, people of color, feminists, and activists to follow in the author’s footsteps in the pursuit of equality and understanding. As The New York Times raves, “Ntozake Shange writes with such exquisite care and beauty that anyone can relate to her message.”

"Rosa" : On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus and refused to give up her seat to a white man. Iconographic (14 minutes) / Lexile [registered trademark] : 900L / GRL: T / Ages 5-12.

Award-winning poet Ntozake Shange and artist Rod Brown reimagine the journeys of the brave men and women who made their way to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Fleeing on the Underground Railroad meant walking long distances; swimming across streams; hiding in abandoned shanties, swamps, and ditches, always on the run from slave trackers and their dogs. ah might get hungry ah may get tired good Lawd / ah may be free The Underground Railroad operated on secrecy and trust. But who could be trusted? There were free black and white men and women helping, risking their lives, too. Because freedom was worth any risk. Celebrated collaborators Ntozake Shange and Rod Brown pay tribute to the Underground Railroad, a universal story about the human need to be free. ah am a livin bein’ & ah got to be free

A vibrant and vital collection that celebrates the three most important muses in the life and work of Ntozake Shange—language, music, and dance. In this deeply personal book, the celebrated writer reflects on what it means to be an artist, a woman, and a woman of color through a beautiful combination of memoir and essay. She describes where her love for creative forces began--in her childhood home, a place where imagination reigned and boredom wasn''t allowed. The essays tell stories ranging from the poignant origin of her celebrated play "for colored girls" to why Shange needed to deconstruct the English language to make that production work, from the intensity of the female experience and the black experience as separate entities to the difficulty of living both lives simultaneously; from the intense love of jazz bestowed on her by her father to a similar obsession with dance, which came from her mother. With deep sincerity, attention, and her legendary candor, Shange''s collection progresses from the public arena to the private, gathering along the way the passions and insights of an author who writes with “such exquisite care and beauty that anybody can relate to her message” (Clive Barnes, The New York Times).

The “extraordinary and wonderful” award-winning play in a new edition featuring an additional poem, production photos, and an introduction by Jesmyn Ward (The New York Times). From its inception in California in 1974 to its Broadway revival in 2022, the Obie Award–winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange’s words reveal what it meant to be a woman of color in the 20th century—and they continue to ring true in the 21st. First published in 1975, it was praised by The New Yorker for “encompassing . . . every feeling and experience a woman has ever had”. This new edition celebrates the play’s enduring legacy with introductions by Jesmyn Ward and Broadway director Camille A. Brown. It also features a poem not previously included in the text, and a selection of photos capturing the play’s evolution and reinvention.

Ntozake Shange''s beloved Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is the story of three sisters and their mother from Charleston, South Carolina. "A jubilant celebration of womanhood—as moving as the moon . . . pure magic." --Kansas City Star Ntozake Shange''s beloved Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo is the story of three sisters and their mother from Charleston, South Carolina. Sassafrass, the oldest, is a poet and a weaver like her mother before her. Having gone north to college, she is now living with other artists in Los Angeles and trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories and dreams. Cypress, the dancer, leaves home to find new ways of moving in the world. Indigo, the youngest, is still a child of Charleston-"too much of the south in her"-who lives in poetry and has the supreme gift of seeing the obvious magic of the world. Shange''s rich and wondrous story of womanhood, art, and passionately-lived lives is written "with such exquisite care and beauty that anybody can relate to her message" (The New York Times).

Groundbreaking and heartbreaking, this triumphant novel by two of America''s most acclaimed storytellers follows a family of women from enslavement to the dawn of the twenty-first century. From Reconstruction to both world wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam, from spirituals and arias to torch songs and the blues, Some Sing, Some Cry brings to life the monumental story of one American family''s journey from slavery into freedom, from country into city, from the past to the future, bright and blazing ahead. Real-life sisters, Ntozake Shange, award-winning author of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Ifa Bayeza, award-winning playwright of The Ballad of Emmett Till, achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this story of seven generations of women, and the men and music in their lives. Opening dramatically at a sprawling plantation just off the South Carolina coast, recently emancipated slave Bette Mayfield quickly says her goodbyes before fleeing for Charleston with her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow. She and Eudora carve out lives for themselves in the bustling port city as seamstress and fortune-teller. Eudora marries, the Mayfield lines grows and becomes an incredibly strong, musically gifted family, a family that is led, protected, and inspired by its women. Some Sing, Some Cry chronicles their astonishing passage through the watershed events of American history.

Words and images come together in a collaboration between celebrated poet Ntozake Shange and an acclaimed group of photographers, to result in this stunning celebration of contemporary Black life in America. From the first publication of The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava in 1967, to Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, collaborations between writers and photographers have been important in African American culture. These books examine the issues of identity and representation that have been so central to this group''s efforts to thrive. The Kamoinge Workshop photographers who contributed their work to this inspiring collection consist of names that have appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and more. Names such as Anthony Barboza, Adger W. Cowans, Ming Smith Murray, Beuford Smith, John Pinderhuges, and many others. The Workshop’s mission was a response from the bias portrayals of African Americans in the media. They sought to shed positive light on their subjects, as well as to demystify Black life in America. And The Sweet Breath of Life does exactly that.

Fotografisk billedværk. Erotiske sort/hvid portrætter af sorte mænd af den amerikanske fotograf Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989)

Jim Crow; Brown v. Board of Education; Bull Connor; KKK; Birmingham; the Lorraine Motel; Rosa; Martin; and Malcolm. From slavery to the separation of "colored" and "white" and from horrifying oppression to inspiring courage, there are countless stories—both forgotten and immortalized—of everyday and extraordinary people who acted for justice during the civil rights movement that changed our nation. Award-winning poet Ntozake Shange and illustrator Rod Brown give voice to all those who fought for their unalienable rights in a triumphant book about the power of the human spirit.

A "choreo-poem" reflecting the views of a black American woman about the women of her race.

In a reflective tribute to the African-American community of old, noted poet Ntozake Shange recalls her childhood home and the close-knit group of innovators that often gathered there. These men of vision, brought to life in the majestic paintings of artist Kadir Nelson, lived at a time when the color of their skin dictated where they could live, what schools they could attend, and even where they could sit on a bus or in a movie theater. Yet in the face of this tremendous adversity, these dedicated souls and others like them not only demonstrated the importance of Black culture in America, but also helped issue in a movement that "changed the world." Their lives and their works inspire us to this day, and serve as a guide to how we approach the challenges of tomorrow.

Publisher Description

The Beacon Best of 1999 is what I would like to remember as the year 2000 approaches, sketches of what we hold sacred and keep for those to come. . . . These stories, poems, and essays pay homage to what''s become of us, to what we bring to the next millennium-the sweet rememberings of the imagined." -Ntozake Shange, from the Introduction Continuing a commitment to presenting experiences drawn from lives lived outside the lines, Beacon Press presents The Beacon Best of 1999, a dazzling collection that includes the work of Dorothy Allison, Junot Díaz, Rita Dove, Louise Erdrich, Martín Espada, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Ha Jin, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hanif Kureishi, Marjorie Sandor, and John Edgar Wideman, as well as rising stars like Touré and Reetika Vazirani. Acclaimed playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange has chosen a treasury of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction published over the past year. In The Beacon Best of 1999, women and men writing with fine grace ask us to look at the whole picture, from the street to the second story-to see, perhaps for the first time, the life of boxer Jack Johnson, or the fierceness of a love transformed into rage for a child killed by gang violence, or the complexities of a love affair in New Delhi, as lenses through which to consider questions of courage, brotherhood, and beauty. The alternative literary annual, The Beacon Best of 1999,/iu003e will introduce you to a world where tradition and convention are overturned and the unexpected is a welcome guest.

A young African-American girl is traumatized when a gang attacks her and her brother on their way home from school and spray-paints her face white. Based on a true story.

"... A young black woman growing up in North America in the ''60s and ''70s [experiences]... the last moments of legal segregation in Mississippi and the beginnings of a class war in the black community of Queens " --Back cover.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.