Author Ntozake Shange dies at 70

Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed theatre piece is the 1975 Tony Awardnominated play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf, died on Saturday, according to her daughter. She was 70.

Shange’s For Colored Girls describes the racism, sexism, violence and rape experienced by seven black women. It has been influential to generations of progressive thinkers, from #MeToo architect Tarana Burke to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. After learning of Shange’s death, Nottage called her “our warrior poet/dramatist.”

Savannah Shange, a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said onSaturday that her mother died in her sleep at an assisted living facility in Bowie, Maryland. She had suffered a series of strokes in 2004.

“She spoke for, and in fact embodied, the ongoing struggle of black women and girls to live with dignity and respect in the context of systemic racism, sexism and oppression,” Savannah said.

Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, she went on to graduate from Barnard College and got a master’s degree from the University of Southern California. Her father, Dr Paul T Williams, was a surgeon. Her mother, Eloise Owens Williams, was a professor of social work. She later assumed a new Zulu name: Ntozake means “She who comes with her own things” and Shange means “She who walks like a lion.” —