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Ntozake Shange
13 quotes
“…The characters in Sassafras did say awful things and trash one another, but there are people who do. In the time of the Sassafras narrative certain women's collectives existed that were very dramatic and people had a lot of lovers. We didn't even call it promiscuity. It was very different from the environment today. People today sit down and think about how they really want to be monogamous. It was not anybody's goal fifteen years ago.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On being criticized by women that Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo was homophobic in “INTERVIEW WITH NTOZAKE SHANGE” in The Massachusetts Review (1986 Dec 22)
“I think I always see a young child or an adolescent of color, but not necessarily right this minute. I started writing because there's an absence of things I was familiar with or that I dreamed about. One of my senses of anger is related to this vacancy—a yearning I had as a teenager. I hate that word. But as an adolescent—to have done something that I didn't have and I didn't know what it was 'cause I had never heard about it…”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On who she once envisioned as the audience in “INTERVIEW WITH NTOZAKE SHANGE” in The Massachusetts Review (1986 Dec 22)
“…I think unless black women are writing the pieces, we're being left out the same way we used to be left out of literature. We don't appear in things unless we write them ourselves. In the white male literary establishment women attain what looks like positions of power or influence or economic stability, but they're structured in such a way that they become unthreatening.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On sexism functions differently in the Black and White writing communities in “INTERVIEW WITH NTOZAKE SHANGE” in The Massachusetts Review (1986 Dec 22)
“i found god in myself & i loved her/i loved her fiercely”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1976)
“We must not let our oppression deny us the earth.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems (2017)
“Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint L'Ouverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wild Beauty: New and Selected Poems (2017)
“I have spent my life undoing language until it works for me. We must not only repossess the language, we must deslaveryize it.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I write for young girls of color, for girls who don’t even exist yet, so that there is something there for them when they arrive. I can only change how they live, not how they think. I want to say, “Here, look where you can live, look what you can think.” I concentrate on giving this to young people because they are the treasurers of black culture.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No. I’m not trying to go away from anybody. I don’t go where my feelings get hurt. If you’re going to be nice to me, I’ll come.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Multiculturalism is a white people joke. Black people have always been here as different. People need to stop saying that there is one way to be–and then the issue will disappear. I don’t tell Navajos they can’t speak Navajo. I don’t tell Asians they can’t eat noodles. Because black people have refused to eat potatoes and cabbage, white people are terrified. Now that we’re saying “I’m talkin’ Zulu, I’m changin’ my name, my child’s goin’ to a black school with Muslims,” white people get upset and have to call it something. Multiculturalism isn’t about culture, it’s about power.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“it doesn’t matter where I live. Just give me a room to write in.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I used to have boundaries up all the time, which is limiting. I never want to feel limited. If anything is life changing, being the descendant of a slave is. I went into therapy 10 years ago because I needed to work that out. I’ve gotten better. Everything about me is more fluid, much less rigid. I’m gonna do everything I can, feel everything I can, until it hurts. Then I’ll stop. All they did was buy us–it’s not an honor, it’s just something that happened. Our gifts belong to us.”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…gender is cultural: we have menarche to deal with, virginity, menopause, pregnancy, childbirth; these things are unavoidable. And in some places they've been wise enough to have ritual and ceremony about significant events. It is unfortunate in our culture-meaning north American mainstream culture—that all this has been minimized to the point where little girls are even afraid to say that they are starting to menstruate when they should be very happy. Grown women are afraid to say that they are approaching the menopause, when that means that they have lived a whole successful life. They've lived so long that they can have this…”
Ntozake Shange (1948–2018) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On her views that gender is a culture of its own in “Drama or Performance Art? An Interview with Ntozake Shange” in Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism (Fall 1991)