Ntozake Shange's most famous work, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem, opened in New York City in 1975.
Selected Ntozake Shange Quotations
• When I die, I will not be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves.
• Sojourner Truth wasn't a big enough role model for me. I couldn't go around abolishing slavery.
• i was cold / i was burnin up / a child
& endlessly weavin garments for the moon
wit my tears
i found god in myself
& i loved her / i loved her fiercely.
• how we live / is important business
latin night only monday
is contagious / dangerous
let us be ourselves / every day
• one thing I don’t need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don’t know what to do wit em
they don’t open doors
or bring the sun back
they don’t make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry.
• I am gonna write poems til i die and when i have gotten outta this body i am gonna hang round in the wind and knock over everybody who got their feet on the ground.
• Our society allows people to be absolutely neurotic and totally out of touch with their feelings and everyone else's feelings, and yet be very respectable.
• Where there is woman there is magic.
• My parents have always been especially involved in all kinds of Third World culture. We used to go to hear Latin music, jazz and symphonies, to see ballets.... I was always aware that there were different kinds of black people all over the world ... So I knew I wasn't on this planet by myself. I had some connections with other people.
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About These Quotes
Quote collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis. Each quotation page in this collection and the entire collection © Jone Johnson Lewis 1997-2006. This is an informal collection assembled over many years. I regret that I am not be able to provide the original source if it is not listed with the quote.
Citation information:
Jone Johnson Lewis. "Ntozake Shange Quotes." About Women's History. URL: http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/ntozake_shange.htm . Date accessed: (today). (More on how to cite online sources including this page)
