Sing a Black Girl's Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange

There are days when it’s difficult to believe Ntozake Shange is dead. She died on October 27, 2018, in Bowie, Maryland. I first met her on October 10, 1977, when I sponsored a reading for her at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. That night she read poetry with her friend Thulani Davis to a theater filled with no empty seats. After I introduced both poets I also had to stand as they both mesmerized the audience. Shange was at the height of her fame. Her choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf which opened in 1975 is now considered a literary classic. In many ways it presented the inner lives of Black woman on the American stage in a way that was unapologetic. Using a cast of only women she pulled together a series of poetic vignettes that were filled with characters seeking to define themselves in new ways. The end of the performance left Black women feeling empowered as well as radiant. How could one not forget some of those closing lines: “i found god in myself & i loved her fiercely.” Imagine if Frederick Douglass had been a woman and had spoken these words during the days of slavery. There would be no need for him to say anything else; there would be no need for Douglass to compose his narrative. 

In many ways Ntozake Shange’s signature work is revolutionary and perhaps explains why so many artists coming after her have imitated her work as well as her lifestyle. Unfortunately success can cast a shadow over an artist’s additional work. One immediately thinks of Lorraine Hansberry, another prominent Black woman playwright, whose play A Raisin in the Sun overshadowed her other work such as “Les Blancs.” 

Readers should be grateful that the writer and scholar Imani Perry edited Sing a Black Girl’s Song. The book consists of unpublished work. Shange, we discover, was prolific. She wrote novels, poetry, and children’s books. Some of the work in this new book is autobiographical, and provides insight into Shange’s inner life.

Perry is selective in what she has chosen and edited. She is like a curator in a gallery deciding what paintings to hang and how they should be illuminated. In the seven sections of the book, she has written brief introductory notes to place Shange’s work in its proper historical and social context. Perry is well qualified to do this since she published Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, a biography of the playwright that was awarded the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography. Perry is also the Hughes-Rogers professor of African American studies at Princeton University. 

The first entry in Sing a Black Girl’s Song is about Shange’s childhood, and finds her writing about her mother. One is given insight into how her future work about women will emerge. Remembering her youth she writes: 

“I liked to hide in the back of my mother’s closet with her dresses and smells. Now I realize many many other little girls did the same. Even my own daughter waltzed about in my robe, wrapping my scent about her like some kind of magic.”

For much of her life Ntozake Shange would attempt to capture those magical moments associated with Black women. These women would have to learn to navigate the rivers of life and the changing colors of their surroundings. The word “colored” would always be a key word in Shange’s vocabulary. The word is used as a way of being separated but not segregated. To be colored is to exist in a joyful world, and this is conveyed in Shange’s description of St. Louis. The early writings that Perry has selected includes one in which Shange writes about coming of age as a writer. One can be suspicious when writers talk about their literary beginnings. How much do they reinvent themselves? Did Shange actually steal a copy of Baldwin’s Giovanni ‘s Room from under her mother’s pillow? 

The unpublished work of Shange is a map into her creative genius. Before she was Ntozake Shange she was Paulette Williams trying to find her wings on the page. Literary detectives that might disguise themselves as critics will notice how Shange’s name not only changes from Paulette but to Ntozake first spelled tozake. This is similar to when LeRoi Jones changed his name to Ameer Baraka and then Amiri Baraka. These name changes are an indication of one’s search for identity and a form of personal revision. 

There are several plays in Sing a Black Girl’s Song. Who will read these plays? Drama students? Are they for scholars who want to understand Shange’s work better? And this is where one wishes there were more essays by Shange in this book. One shouldn’t have to sift through poems and plays in search of clues and pieces of puzzles to understand Shange’s genius. Her unpublished work is like John Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things” and massaging our ears with wonder and magic. And after all is said and done we return to for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf celebrating this production as if we were listening to Coltrane playing “A Love Supreme” for the first time.