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    Ntozake Shange

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    Quasimoto3rd
    Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in 1948 in New Jersey to educated parents who provided a rich intellectual environment. As a young girl, she began analyzing and critiquing poetry. She adopted the name Ntozake Shange at age 23 to disassociate from her Anglo-Saxon name's association with slavery. Shange's poetics represent the experiences of black women and their initiation into womanhood, including experiences with abandonment, rape, abortion, and existing in a misogynistic world. Her poems give voice to voiceless black women and their possibilities through themes of liberation, companionship, and self-reliance.

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    Ntozake Shange

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    Quasimoto3rd
    103 views1 page
    Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in 1948 in New Jersey to educated parents who provided a rich intellectual environment. As a young girl, she began analyzing and critiquing poetry. She adopted the name Ntozake Shange at age 23 to disassociate from her Anglo-Saxon name's association with slavery. Shange's poetics represent the experiences of black women and their initiation into womanhood, including experiences with abandonment, rape, abortion, and existing in a misogynistic world. Her poems give voice to voiceless black women and their possibilities through themes of liberation, companionship, and self-reliance.

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    Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in 1948 in New Jersey to educated parents who provided a rich intellectual environment. As a young girl, she began analyzing and critiquing poetry. She adopted the name Ntozake Shange at age 23 to disassociate from her Anglo-Saxon name's association with slavery. Shange's poetics represent the experiences of black women and their initiation into womanhood, including experiences with abandonment, rape, abortion, and existing in a misogynistic world. Her poems give voice to voiceless black women and their possibilities through themes of liberation, companionship, and self-reliance.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    103 views1 page

    Ntozake Shange

    Uploaded by

    Quasimoto3rd
    Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in 1948 in New Jersey to educated parents who provided a rich intellectual environment. As a young girl, she began analyzing and critiquing poetry. She adopted the name Ntozake Shange at age 23 to disassociate from her Anglo-Saxon name's association with slavery. Shange's poetics represent the experiences of black women and their initiation into womanhood, including experiences with abandonment, rape, abortion, and existing in a misogynistic world. Her poems give voice to voiceless black women and their possibilities through themes of liberation, companionship, and self-reliance.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
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    Ntozake Shange Poetics

    Shange was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, on October 18, 1948. She was raised by two affluent parents - Her mother, an educator and social worker, and her father, a sports physician. This contributed to the rich intellectual environment surrounding Shange's childhood. During these same years, Shange and her sister attended poetry readings. Even at a young age, she began to analyze and critique the poetry she had heard. At one reading, Shange recalls the poetry of women who had formerly been raised in the South. "We were getting very upset by what, in our ignorance, we saw as their romanticization of Southern living. And I was saying to myself, if it was as wonderful as all that, why in the hell did you all come up to the North? As she aged, Shange became increasingly aware of the limits placed on black Americans, specifically Black Women. At the age of twenty-three, Williams adopted the Zulu name Ntozake Shange as a name more appropriate to her poetic talents. She felt that her Anglo-Saxon last name was associated with slavery and her given name was a feminized version of the male name Paul. Shange once stated in an interview that she changed her name to disassociate herself from the history of a culture that championed slavery. Not only to be free of the traditional form of slavery we are all aware of, but also the slavery put on to woman, and woman of color. Ntozake Shanges poetics can be defined as a lyrical and visual representation of the experience of black woman and their ini tiation into womanhood. This womanhood comes with the liberation of self, a longing for male companionship, thoughts of abandonment, bouts with rape, the coldness of abortion, and the difficulty of being a women in an misogynistic environment. This initiation begins on pg. 21, and reads dark phrases of womanhood of never havin been a girl<shes dancin on beer cans & shingles< The line dark phrases comes with two meanings: The dark phrases representing sisters of color, as well as the hardships wom en face when coming of age in a misogynistic world. Here the speaker tells us that woman have been muted from themselves. The theme of being voiceless appears again on pg. 22 shes been dead so long, closed in silence so long, she doesnt know the sound of her own voice. This poem, although sta rting off as a morose reminder to the lack of agency black women have, becomes hopeful in its ending, Sing the song of her possibilities, sing a righteous gospel, let her be born, let her be born and handled warmly Another example of this initiation appears on pg. 33 and reads, this waz an experiment< The speakers relationship was no more a test to see how shed deal with abandonment; she wanted to explore her own self -reliance for another. Another example of the initiation into womanhood occurs on pg. 56-57, I usedta< The misogyny in this poem compels the speaker to change her attitude towards men. She doesnt say I wont be nice but I cant be nice The speaker understands how kindness is quickly turned into devastating sadness. This sadness is illustrated on pg. 54 & when she finished writing<

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