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Ms. Magazine’s September 2023 Reads for the Rest of Us
The Millions “Most Anticipated” Books of 2023
LitHub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2023
Never-before-seen unpublished works by award-winning American literary icon Ntozake Shange, featuring essays, plays, and poems from the archives of the seminal Black feminist writer who stands alongside giants like Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, curated by National Book Award winner Imani Perry with a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Tarana Burke.
In the late ’60s, Ntozake Shange was a student at Barnard College discovering her budding talent as a writer, publishing in her school’s literary journal, and finding her unique voice. By the time she left us in 2018, Shange had scorched blazing trails across countless pages and stages, redefining genre and form as we know them, each verse, dance, and song a love letter to Black women and girls, and the community at large.
Sing a Black Girl’s Song is a new posthumous collection of Shange’s unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. In these pages we meet young Shange, learn the moments that inspired for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf…, travel with an eclectic family of musicians, sit on “The Couch” opposite Shange’s therapist, and discover plays written after for colored girls’ international success. Sing a Black Girl’s Song houses, in their original form, the literary rebel’s politically charged verses from the Black Arts Movement era alongside her signature tender rhythm and cadence that capture the minutia and nuance of Black life. Sing a Black Girl’s Song is the continuation of a literary tradition that has bolstered generations of writers and a long-lasting gift from one of the fiercest and most highly celebrated artists of our time.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 12, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780306828539
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780306828539
- File size: 7927 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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August 1, 2023
Previously unseen writing from an essential Black author. Shange is perhaps best known for her Obie Award-winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. But in addition to being a playwright, she was also a poet, a novelist, and a diarist, and when she died in 2018, she left behind a wealth of unpublished work. Harvard professor Imani Perry searched through these archives and chose the essays, poems, short stories, and plays presented in this collection. Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement and bestselling author, offers a foreword in which she explains how "Shange's words gave me language for my own experiences with trauma and love." Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1948, the writer would ultimately change her name and become a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement. In some of these pieces, Shange offers glimpses of her family--well-educated, financially well off, and keenly aware of racial difference. She describes a voracious love of reading that encompassed everything from Nancy Drew to Giovanni's Room as well as the process of discovering the voice that begins to emerge in her early poems. Those acquainted with the author will see familiar themes emerge as she engages with colonialism, code switching, white supremacy, liberation politics, sexism, sexual violence, and collective trauma. She writes of desire and despair and revolution and Black joy using language and imagery that she was taught to hide from white people. In a series of short vignettes Perry gathers into a chapter called "Dark Rooms," Shange speaks candidly of her struggles with mental health and her years in psychoanalysis, and she insists that therapy made her a better writer. Several plays, only one of which has been performed, are presented here. Shange continued writing and experimenting right up until her death, and the last section of this book contains poems and prose she produced between 1996 and 2018. The literary value of these works extends far beyond the insight they offer into Shange's life and artistic career.COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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