Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shange
Ntozake Shangeis an American playwright, and poet. As a self-proclaimed black feminist, she addresses issues relating to race and feminism in much of her work...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth18 October 1948
CityTrenton, NJ
CountryUnited States of America
wall want terrible
I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.
leaving south
I've never thought of leaving the South, never.
pain kindness confused
The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
rip nice niceness
nice is such a rip-off.
bizarre ordinariness
in our ordinaryness we are most bizarre.
sympathy sorry apology
one thing I don’t need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i don’t know what to do wit em they don’t open doors or bring the sun back they don’t make me happy or get a mornin paper didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry.
teenager writing thinking
I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy - a yearning I had as a teenager. . .and when I get ready to write, I think I'm trying to fill that. . .
space manners disappear
When words & manners leave you no space for yourself make very personal very clear & your obstructions will join you or disappear.
soul spirit separation
my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender
dream blood draws
our dreams draw blood from old sores.
emotional average ideas
I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive. ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation.
alive being-a-woman colored-girls
Being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.
girl emotional thinking
When I die, I will no be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.
creativity creation
Creation is everything you do. Make something.