Losing a Literary Giant: The Passing of Ntozake Shange

Posted by: Michele Tracy Berger on: October 29, 2018

• In: African American women | black feminism | black feminists | creative writing | creativity | people of color | women and creativity | women of color | women's creativity | writing
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The literary community has lost a brilliant playwright, poet and visionary–Ntozoke Shange has died. I am quite sad.

I discovered her work in college and was transfixed by it.

Two of my favorite novels of hers include Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo, a novel about three African American women who are sisters and their path of creative self-discovery and Betsey Brown, a historical novel that chronicles what desegregation was like for an African American girl in the 7th grade in St. Louis, Missouri.

Shange wrote poetry, plays, children’s books, and novels, leaving us a rich corpus of work.

I took a workshop with her in my early 20s that was truly transformative and gave me courage and inspiration that I drew on decades later. Her work influenced a whole generation of women of color creatives. She will be missed.

Read more about her here.

Tags: African American women, black women, creative, creative writing, creativity, fiction, fiction writing, novel writing, novels, plays, playwriting, poetry, the writing life, women and creativity, women writers, writers, writing