Sing a Black Girl's Song

Sing a Black Girl’s Song collects unpublished essays, plays and poems by Black feminist writer Ntozake Shange, who died in 2018. For five decades, Shange explored the experience of women of color in her work, giving voice and space to the struggles that these women so often face alone. Shange is best known for her play for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, but has many plays, novels, poetry collections and children’s books in print. The new collection will be discussed by editor Imani Perry, Tarana J. Burke (who wrote the foreword), and scholar-activist Yaba Blay. This Wisconsin Book Festival talk will take place on Crowdcast.

media release: Sing a Black Girl’s Song, is a new posthumous collection of Ntozake Shange’s unpublished poems, essays, and plays from throughout the life of the seminal Black feminist writer. Join the event at: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/wbf-sing-a-black-girls-song. Before the event begins, you will see a countdown and the event image.

This seminal collection is a window into Shange’s internal life, from her writings as a budding poet and her galvanizing calls to action written during the Black Arts Movement to her verse and prose are infused with humor, sadness, joy, and projections of a better future — exemplifying not only the breadth of Black experience in America, but of the human experience as a whole. Throughout, she references the people, languages, places, music, and groups that influenced and enriched her work. Where the world often forces Black women into isolation due to systematic injustice, Shange, in her undeniably singular voice, firmly rebuked the idea that we are meant to suffer alone, or at all. For every Black woman and girl drowning in feelings of self-doubt, lovelessness, and victimhood, Shange used her prose to provide love and healing.

Ntozake Shange, author of 36 published works, is increasingly recognized as one of America’s greatest writers having, for 50 years, embodied the struggle of women of color for equality and the recognition of their contribution to human culture. Shange’s literary legacy, preserved in the Shange Institute at Barnard College, comprises 13 plays, seven novels, six children’s books, and 19 poetry collections, the majority of which are published and in print.

Tarana J. Burke (Foreword), for more than 25 years as activist, advocate, and author, has worked at the intersection of sexual violence and racial justice. Fueled by commitments to interrupt sexual violence and other systemic inequalities disproportionately impacting marginalized people, particularly Black women and girls, Tarana has created and led various campaigns focused on increasing access to resources and support for impacted communities, including the ‘me too.’ Movement, which has galvanized millions of survivors and allies around the world, and the me too.