Ntozake Shange (1948-2018 ), African-American playwright, novelist, essayist, story writer, poet and performance artist, has dedicated her career to dramatizing the struggle of African-American women to achieve recognition and respect in modern society. Her work tackles such thorny social issues as racism, sexism, and poverty in a language that is by turns precise and ambiguous. In an interview with Henry Blackwell, published in the Winter 1979 issue of Black American Literature Forum (vol. 13, no. 4), Shange insisted that poetic writing must be 'concise and powerful and as illusory as possible, so that the language can, in fact, bring you to more conclusions than the one in the poem'. In addition to her poetic and dramatic writings, Shange has published several noteworthy novels, children's books and essay collections, while also enjoying a long career as a teacher.
Genre: Biographies; Poetry
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf by 
Wild Beauty : new and selected poems by 
Black Feminist Criticism: perspectives on Black women writers by 
Black Women Writers at Work by 
Workings of the Spirit: the poetics of Afro-American women's writing by