Ntozake Shange Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Ntozake Shange. Here they are! All 71 of them:

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Where there is a woman there is magic.
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Ntozake Shange
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i found god in myself and i loved her i loved her fiercely
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Ntozake Shange
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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.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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Where there is a woman there is magic. If there is a moon falling from her mouth, she is a woman who knows her magic, who can share or not share her powers. A woman with a moon falling from her mouth, roses between her legs and tiaras of Spanish moss, this woman is a consort of the spirits.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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Through my tears I found god in myself and I loved her fiercely
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Ntozake Shange
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Ever since I realized there waz someone callt/ a colored girl an evil woman a bitch or a nag/ i been tryin not to be that & leave bitterness/ in somebody else's cup...
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i usedta live in the world really be in the world free & sweet talkin good mornin & thank-you & nice day uh huh i cant now i cant be nice to nobody nice is such a rip-off regular beauty & a smile in the street is just a set-up
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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without any assistance or guidance from you i have loved you assiduously for 8 months 2 wks & a day i have been stood up four times i've left 7 packages on yr doorstep forty poems 2 plants & 3 handmade notecards i left town so i cd send to you have been no help to me on my job you call at 3:00 in the mornin on weekdays so i cd drive 27 1/2 miles cross the bay before i go to work charmin charmin but you are of no assistance i want you to know this waz an experiment to see how selifsh i cd be if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another if i cd stand not being wanted when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot so with no further assistance & no guidance from you i am endin this affair this note is attached to a plant i've been waterin since the day i met you you may water it yr damn self
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i loved you on purpose i was open on purpose i still crave vulnerability & close talk & i'm not even sorry bout you bein sorry you can carry all the guilt & grime ya wanna just dont give it to me i cant use another sorry next time you should admit you're mean/ low-down/ triflin/ & no count straight out steada bein sorry alla the time enjoy bein yrself
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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The slaves who were ourselves had known terror intimately, confused sunrise with pain, & accepted indifference as kindness.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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i'm only human, & inadequacy is what makes us human, & if we was perfect we wdnt have nothin to strive for, so you might as well go on & forgive me pretty baby, cause i'm sorry
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i am really colored & really sad sometimes & you hurt me more than i ever danced outta/ i am ready to die like a lily in the desert/ & i cdnt let you in on it cuz i didnt know/ here is what i have/ poems/ big thighs/ lil tits/ & so much love/ will you take it from me this one time/ please this is for you
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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but bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face my love is too beautiful to have thrown back on my face my love is too sanctified to have thrown back on my face my love is too magic to have thrown back on my face my love is too saturday nite to have thrown back on my face my love is too complicated to have thrown back on my face my love is too music to have thrown back on my face
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i survive on intimacy & tomorrow/
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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What I want and I wanted to be unforgettable.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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let her be born / let her be born / & handled warmly.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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we need a god who bleeds now a god whose wounds are not some small male vengeance some pitiful concession to humility a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord we need a god who bleeds spreads her lunar vulva & showers us in shades of scarlet thick & warm like the breath of her our mothers tearing to let us in this place breaks open like our mothers bleeding the planet is heaving mourning our ignorance the moon tugs the seas to hold her/to hold her embrace swelling hills/i am not wounded i am bleeding to life we need a god who bleeds now whose wounds are not the end of anything
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Ntozake Shange
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i done forgot all abt words aint got no definitions
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i got 15 trumpets where other women got hips & a upright bass for both sides of my heart
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Ntozake Shange (I Live in Music: Poem)
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(Interviews Ntozake Shange) β€œWhat do you think an artist’s job is?” β€œTo keep our sensibilities alive, so we aren’t numb by our struggles to survive. That’s what I think our job is right now.
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Eileen Myles (The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art)
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i found god in myself & i loved her/ i loved her fiercely
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Ntozake Shange
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You can't fuck somebody into loving you.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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rise up fallen fighters unfetter the stars dance with the universe & make it ours
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Ntozake Shange (From Okra to Greens: A Difference Love Story)
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Being alive and being a woman is all I got but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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i’m a poet who writes in english come to share the worlds witchu
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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i want you to know this waz an experiment to see how selfish i cd be if i wd really carry on to snare a possible lover if i waz capable of debasin my self for the love of another if i cd stand not being wanted when i wanted to be wanted & i cannot so with no further assistance & no guidance from you i am endin this affair this note is attached to a plant i've been waterin since the day i met you you may water it yr damn self
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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I was a happy young woman and I just happened to write poetry. I wasn’t trying to get anywhere, I was where I wanted to be...” Rest In love Queen!!
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Ntozake Shange
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Being alive and being a woman is all I got but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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& i am more/ than i am not/
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Ntozake Shange (The Love Space Demands: A Continuing Saga)
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[S]ince I became a woman, boys were gonna follow me around more often, 'cause they could follow the trail of stars that fall from between my legs after dark.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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and poet Ntozake Shange put it, β€œi found god in myself / and i loved her / i loved her
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Sue Monk Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine)
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found god in myself/and i loved her/i loved her fiercely β€”NTOZAKE SHANGE
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Jada Pinkett Smith (Worthy)
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The poems introduce the girls to other kinds of people of color, other worlds. To adventure, and kindness, and cruelty. Cruelty that we usually think we face alone, but we don’t. We discover that by sharing with each other we find strength to go on. The poems are the play’s first hint of the global misogyny that we women face.
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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Staples sees in Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls "a collective appetite for black male blood." Yet it is my female children and my black sisters who lie bleeding all around me, victims of the appetites of our brothers.
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Audre Lorde (Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches)
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lady in blue one thing i dont need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i dont know what to do wit em they dont open doors or bring the sun back they dont make me happy or get a mornin paper didnt nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars cuz a sorry i am simply tired of collectin β€˜i didnt know i was so important to you’ i’m gonna haveta throw some away i cant get to the clothes in my closet for alla the sorries i’m gonna tack a sign to my door leave a message by the phone β€˜if you called to say yr sorry call somebody else i dont use em anymore’ i
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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I found God in myself and I loved her . . . I loved her fiercely.
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Ntozake Shange
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let her be born let her be born & handled warmly.
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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i usedta live in the world then i moved to HARLEM & my universe is now six blocks
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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The reaction from black men to for colored girls was in a way very much like the white reaction to black power. The body traditionally used to power and authority interpreting, through their own fear, my work celebrating the self-determination and centrality of women as a hostile act. For men to walk out feeling that the work was about them spoke to their own patriarchal delusions more than to the actuality of the work itself. It was as if merely placing the story outside themselves was an attack. for colored girls was and is for colored girls.
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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one thing i dont need is any more apologies i got sorry greetin me at my front door you can keep yrs i dont know what to do wit em they dont open doors or bring the sun back they dont make me happy
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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lady in red but if you’ve been seen in public wit him danced one dance kissed him good-bye lightly lady in purple wit closed mouth lady in blue pressin charges will be as hard as keepin yr legs closed while five fools try to run a train on you lady in red these men friends of ours who smile nice stay employed and take us out to dinner lady in purple lock the door behind you lady in blue wit fist in face to fuck lady in red who make elaborate mediterranean dinners & let the art ensemble carry all ethical burdens while they invite a coupla friends over to have you are sufferin from latent rapist bravado & we are left wit the scars lady
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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Knowing a woman's mind and spirit had been allowed me, with dance I discovered my body more intimately than I had imagined possible. With the acceptance of the ethnicity of my thighs and backside, came a clearer understanding of my voice as a woman and poet. The freedom to move in space, to demand of my own sweat perfection that could continually be approached, though never known, waz poem to me, my body and mind ellipsing, probably for the first time in my life. Dance as explicated by Raymond Sawyer and Ed Mock insisted that everything African, everything halfway colloquial, a grimace, a strut, an arched back over a yawn, waz mine. I moved what waz my unconscious knowledge of being a colored woman's body to my known everydayness.
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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anyway, the whole world knows, european & non-european alike, the whole world knows that nobody loves the black woman like they love farrah fawcett-majors. the whole world dont turn out for a dead black woman like they did for marilyn monroe. (actually, the demise of josephine baker waz an international event, but she waz also a war hero)
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Ntozake Shange
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Sassafras had never wanted to weave, she just couldn't help it. There was something about the feel of raw fleece and finished threads and dainty patterned pieces that was as essential to her as dancing to Carmen De Lavallade, or singing to Aretha Franklin. Her mama had done it, and her mama before that; and making cloth was the only tradition Sassafras inherited that gave her a sense of womanhood that was rich and sensuous, not tired and stingy.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he was wrong to have filled her head with tales of Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, let alone take her to see Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Maybe it wasn’t right to wake up to Chico Hamilton, Lee Morgan, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey in the morning. Watch the sunset with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Little Willie John. But Greer didn’t know what else to offer that was beautiful and colored and alive, all at the same time.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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Cypress laid waste to the tunnels, caverns, and shadows of the other world. She drew upon memories of her own blood: her presence would be a mortal threat to those who wounded, maimed, her ancestors, her lovers, Leroy. Like those women before her, who loaded bundles on their heads and marched off to fields that were not their own, like the "bearers" of her dreams swamped with births of infants they would never rear, Cypress clung to her body, the body of a dancer; the chart of her recklessness, her last weapon, her perimeters: blood, muscle, and the will to simply change the world.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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I used to be a roller coaster girl" (for Ntozake Shange) I used to be a roller coaster girl 7 times in a row No vertigo in these skinny legs My lipstick bubblegum pink As my panther 10 speed. never kissed Nappy pigtails, no-brand gym shoes White lined yellow short-shorts Scratched up legs pedaling past borders of humus and baba ganoush Masjids and liquor stores City chicken, pepperoni bread and superman ice cream Cones. Yellow black blending with bits of Arabic Islam and Catholicism. My daddy was Jesus My mother was quiet Jayne Kennedy was worshipped by my brother Mark I don’t remember having my own bed before 12. Me and my sister Lisa shared. Sometimes all three Moore girls slept in the Queen. You grow up so close never close enough. I used to be a roller coaster girl Wild child full of flowers and ideas Useless crushes on polish boys in a school full of white girls. Future black swan singing Zeppelin, U2 and Rick Springfield Hoping to be Jessie’s Girl I could outrun my brothers and Everybody else to that reoccurring line I used to be a roller coaster girl Till you told me I was moving too fast Said my rush made your head spin My laughter hurt your ears A scream of happiness A whisper of freedom Pouring out my armpits Sweating up my neck You were always the scared one I kept my eyes open for the entire trip Right before the drop I would brace myself And let that force push my head back into That hard iron seat My arms nearly fell off a few times Still, I kept running back to the line When I was done Same way I kept running back to you I used to be a roller coaster girl I wasn’t scared of mountains or falling Hell, I looked forward to flying and dropping Off this earth and coming back to life every once in a while I found some peace in being out of control allowing my blood to race through my veins for 180 seconds I earned my sometime nicotine pull I buy my own damn drinks & the ocean Still calls my name when it feels my toes Near its shore. I still love roller coasters & you grew up to be Afraid of all girls who cld ride Fearlessly like me.
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Jessica Care Moore
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Ntozake Shange tells us it's not so good to be born a girl. She does not object to being born a girl. She objects to what it means when you are born a girl. She objects to the way that girls are treated. She objects to the way that our dreams are stifled. She objects to the way that we are not taken seriously, we are there as some sort of plaything,
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Nikki Giovanni (Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking At The Harlem Renaissance Through Poems)
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there some coloureds, negroes, blacks, cd make a living big enough to leave there to come here: but no one went there much any more for all sorts of reasons. the big reason being immigration restrictions & unemployment. nowadays, immigration restrictions of every kind apply to any non-european persons who want to go there from here. just like unemployment applies to most non-european persons without titles of nobility or north american university training. some who want to go there from here risk fetching trouble with the customs authority there. or later with the police, who, can tell who's not from there cuz the shoes are pointed & laced strange/the pants be for august & yet it's january/the accent is patterned for port-au-prince, but working in crown heights. what makes a person comfortably ordinary here cd make him dangerously conspicuous there. so some go to london or amsterdam or paris, where they are so many no one tries to tell who is from where. still the far right wing of every there prints lil pamphlets that say everyone from here shd leave there & go back where they came from.
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Ntozake Shange
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& alla my niggah temper came outta control & i wdnt dance wit nobody & i talked English loud & i love you more than i waz mad
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Ntozake Shange
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somebody almost run off wit alla my stuff & i waz standin there lookin at myself the whole time
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Ntzoake Shange
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Love kisses were the best kind. There was no denying that a kiss from someone you loved was different from any other kind of kiss and should be studied up on and looked at carefully, so you could recognize it when love came down on you. That’s what love did. It came down on you like rain or sunshine.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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Jane didn’t miss white folks, she didn’t like white folks, she tried not to think about them. She kept her world as colored as she could. There was enough of it. From Langston Hughes to Sojourner Truth, her children’s worlds were hardly deprived
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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This was one night she would see all the stars and the moon as the sun rose, when there was that peculiar mingling of past and tomorrows, when the sun glanced cross the sky to the moon hoverin over the telephone wires, and everyone else was ignorant of the powers of light and the dark.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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The street was vacant. Like a big old movie set. Nothing. Nobody to do a thing with. What could she do alone? Better yet, what could she do alone that could exclude the white folks, who were nowhere to be seen except in her wounds and aches of memories. Betsey decided to play hop-scotch, but she laid the hop-scotch pattern out with enough room to write β€œFor Colored Only,” β€œCrackers and Dogs Not Allowed,” β€œPeckerwoods Got No Welcome Here,” β€œGuineas Go Home.” Betsey’s hop-scotch was something to behold. Chalk never seemed so powerful as when it messed with white folks.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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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.
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Ntozake Shange
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The pedicure Regina executed herself. She wanted Betsey to feel relaxed and cared about. The way all little Negro girls should feel. Not cramped or out of place, or funny-looking or easy. Just lovely and well-loved.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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A child had a right to be a child. Even in Mississippi a girl was a girl till her time came. White folks or no white folks. Nobody sent a little ol’ thing out to take up for the whole damn race.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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other worlds. To adventure, and kindness, and cruelty. Cruelty that we usually think we face alone, but we don’t. We discover that by sharing with each other we find strength to go on. The poems are the play’s first hint of the global misogyny that we women face.
”
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Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf)
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What ever was she going to do? She took the emery boards from the top left drawer and started doing her nails. She was going to play bridge, but before she did that she was going to have a scotch and soda and play a game of solitaire with the prettiest hands a woman with this many problems could have.
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Ntozake Shange (Betsey Brown: A Novel)
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Through my tears 1 found god in myself and I loved her fiercely".
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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I found God in Myself and I loved Her, and I loved Her, and I loved HerΒ .Β .Β . fiercely. β€”NTOZAKE SHANGE
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Tosha Silver (Change Me Prayers: The Hidden Power of Spiritual Surrender)
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i cdnt stand it i cdnt stand bein colored & sorry at the same time it's so redundant in the modern world
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Ntozake Shange (For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf)
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And this is for Colored girls who have considered suicide, but are moving to the ends of their own rainbows.” -For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf, Ntozake Shange, 1975
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Tatiana Obey (Sistah Samurai)
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Exiles, she and Leroy. They didn't need to go to Paris; that would do no good. What's the point of being spat on in France? What could they do in Rio, where black people are a mythological presence? No, the frontiers in Leroy's destiny were the sounds he heard and gave back as music; for Cypress the terrain of the new world was art. Her dance, like her people before her, adapted to the contours of her new land.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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Some folks you tell some things, some folks you don’t.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo)
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When you realize your blood has come, smile; an honest smile, for you are about to have an intense union with your magic. This is a private time...for thinking and dreaming. [D]raining worries, fall away as your body lets what she doesn't need go from her. Remember that you are a river; your banks are red honey where the Moon wanders.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)
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Lord help women who shake hands like a dead fish.
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Ntozake Shange (Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo)