Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
A Writer’s Struggles, on and Off the Page
By FELICIA R. LEE
Her feminist war cry of a play, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” is Ntozake Shange’s signature work, produced on Broadway in 1976 when she was in her 20s. Now 61, her speech and movements slowed by a series of minor strokes but her intensity undimmed, Ms. Shange is having another moment, or two, this fall.
Out this week is her new novel, “Some Sing, Some Cry,” a nearly 600-page family saga written with her sister Ifa Bayeza. In early November, the long-awaited film adaptation of “For Colored Girls,” will bring that influential work to a new generation courtesy of a most unlikely director, the comedy and melodrama impresario Tyler Perry.
The film and the book each took winding paths to completion. Ms. Shange and Ms. Bayeza, 59, worked for 15 years on the complex task of jointly writing a novel that features seven generations of an African-American family sustained by one another and by music. After years of keeping in touch about the book mostly through e-mails and phone calls, they came together recently for a joint interview in the downtown Manhattan office of their publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Ms. Bayeza, a playwright, flew in from Chicago; Ms. Shange (her name is pronounced en-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHN-gay) took a car service from her home in Brooklyn.
Calling each other “Zake” and “Fa” and taking turns to remember bits of family lore, the sisters also talked about how they divided the writing, often by historical eras. “Some Sing, Some Cry” moves through Reconstruction, two World Wars, the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement. Along the way the descendants of Betty Mayfield create or are inspired by jazz, blues, spirituals, rhythm and blues and other forms of music. The book concludes in contemporary times with Tokyo Walker, a famous R&B singer who embarks on a tour of Africa.
Ms. Bayeza looked concerned during the interview when Ms. Shange seemed to become fatigued and shifted to be more comfortable. Ms. Shange was content to let her sister do most of the talking — “It’s her first novel,” she said later — though she made it clear that she felt the book fills a need: “I don’t see any complicated, thought-provoking depictions of black people in a multilayered way. That’s why I was willing to work on this for so long.”
Ms. Shange remained mum on who did what in the collaboration. She noted, though, that “each of our chapters has its own dialect, its own spelling and pronunciation of the characters’ names and also their perceptions of their skin colors.” Those variations reflect the fluidity of African-American language through the years, she said, and the power of perception.
Ms. Bayeza, who admitted that Ms. Shange wrote the opening pages and that she handled the sections having to do with war, said, “It becomes this kind of puzzle game for people to figure out where the voice shifts.” But they also did plenty of weaving, she added. Kaiama L. Glover, writing in a forthcoming review in The New York Times Book Review said the experiment largely worked, resulting in a “story of lifesaving music and heartbroken maternity” that is “engaging from start to finish.”
“Some Sing” is the first novel by Ms. Shange, who is also a prolific poet and playwright, since 1994’s “Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter,” about a young black artist’s struggle with racism and maternal abandonment. It gives readers “another family to turn to when things look bleak,” Ms. Shange said.
Bleak is how her own situation looked beginning in 2004. She began to have trouble with her balance and her speech and eventually received a diagnosis of having had a series of minor strokes. At her worst, she was unable to talk, read or write. Her speech is now audible but slowed, and her balance and dexterity are impaired.
Deciding to work with her sister had its genesis long before the stroke. In the 1970s a television and film producer approached Ms. Shange with the idea of a mini-series that would trace the history of black music through the role of women. Ms. Shange turned to Ms. Bayeza, whose stage works addressing black history include “Amistad Voices,” “Club Harlem,” and “The Ballad of Emmett Till.”
The two quickly sketched an outline for the arc of the story but shelved it for many years as life and other projects intervened. In the mid-’90s, they renewed the writing at the urging of Ms. Shange’s long-time editor at St. Martin’s, Michael Denneny.
“We grew up with stories like these,” Ms. Bayeza said of the novel’s tales. The sisters were raised in St. Louis and in Lawrence Township, N.J., the oldest of four children of a surgeon, Paul T. Williams, and Eloise O. Williams, a social worker and educator who also had a fondness for the arts. As young adults they jettisoned their given names for African ones.
While their parents are now deceased, the sisters can trace their father’s family line to 1757 with the arrival of two African brothers in the slave-holding territory of New Jersey. Their mother’s side was researched back to 1800 and Filis, an enslaved woman who traveled with her owners to South Carolina.
The story of how Betty Mayfield, a former slave travels to blackmail her white former owners, comes from real-life family lore, according to the sisters. Another character, Raymond Minor, reflects the life of their grandfather, a builder who passed for “black Irish” to get into the carpenter’s union in New York.
Both sisters are single now. Ms. Shange has an adult daughter and Ms. Bayeza does not have children. Their relationship is “symbiotic,” Ms. Bayeza said, close enough that they trusted each other to write without interference from the other. Ms. Bayeza confessed that some sections were hard to write; Ms. Shange said she went with the flow.
With a hefty first printing of 100,000, a national book tour and its selection as Essence magazine’s September book club pick, “Some Sing” might bring Ms. Shange her biggest splash since “For Colored Girls.”
A series of poetic monologues (Ms. Shange called it a “choreopoem”) about domestic abuse, abortion and self-love, among other topics, “For Colored Girls” is still steadily performed on college campuses, and is widely seen as influencing a generation of spoken-word poets, playwrights and performance artists.
Ms. Shange managed “to combine femininity and feminism” and wrap it in a downtown artistic sensibility, said Lynn Nottage, a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for “Ruined.” She described Ms. Shange as “the first African-American female playwright I saw welcomed into the mainstream.”
For years, filmmakers talked about a movie version, but it came about courtesy of Mr. Perry, the writer and director of a successful string of films (and television series) about African-American life that some observers have criticized as clichéd and racially stereotypical. Much of his work has featured Mr. Perry in drag as the saucy matriarch Madea. Ms. Shange said she explicitly told Mr. Perry that Madea could not be in “Colored Girls.”
The film is scheduled to open in theaters on Nov. 5 with a starry ensemble cast that includes Phylicia Rashad, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, and Thandie Newton. And no Madea.
Read the Full Article @ The New York Times
By FELICIA R. LEE
Her feminist war cry of a play, “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” is Ntozake Shange’s signature work, produced on Broadway in 1976 when she was in her 20s. Now 61, her speech and movements slowed by a series of minor strokes but her intensity undimmed, Ms. Shange is having another moment, or two, this fall.
Out this week is her new novel, “Some Sing, Some Cry,” a nearly 600-page family saga written with her sister Ifa Bayeza. In early November, the long-awaited film adaptation of “For Colored Girls,” will bring that influential work to a new generation courtesy of a most unlikely director, the comedy and melodrama impresario Tyler Perry.
The film and the book each took winding paths to completion. Ms. Shange and Ms. Bayeza, 59, worked for 15 years on the complex task of jointly writing a novel that features seven generations of an African-American family sustained by one another and by music. After years of keeping in touch about the book mostly through e-mails and phone calls, they came together recently for a joint interview in the downtown Manhattan office of their publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Ms. Bayeza, a playwright, flew in from Chicago; Ms. Shange (her name is pronounced en-toh-ZAH-kee SHAHN-gay) took a car service from her home in Brooklyn.
Calling each other “Zake” and “Fa” and taking turns to remember bits of family lore, the sisters also talked about how they divided the writing, often by historical eras. “Some Sing, Some Cry” moves through Reconstruction, two World Wars, the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement. Along the way the descendants of Betty Mayfield create or are inspired by jazz, blues, spirituals, rhythm and blues and other forms of music. The book concludes in contemporary times with Tokyo Walker, a famous R&B singer who embarks on a tour of Africa.
Ms. Bayeza looked concerned during the interview when Ms. Shange seemed to become fatigued and shifted to be more comfortable. Ms. Shange was content to let her sister do most of the talking — “It’s her first novel,” she said later — though she made it clear that she felt the book fills a need: “I don’t see any complicated, thought-provoking depictions of black people in a multilayered way. That’s why I was willing to work on this for so long.”
Ms. Shange remained mum on who did what in the collaboration. She noted, though, that “each of our chapters has its own dialect, its own spelling and pronunciation of the characters’ names and also their perceptions of their skin colors.” Those variations reflect the fluidity of African-American language through the years, she said, and the power of perception.
Ms. Bayeza, who admitted that Ms. Shange wrote the opening pages and that she handled the sections having to do with war, said, “It becomes this kind of puzzle game for people to figure out where the voice shifts.” But they also did plenty of weaving, she added. Kaiama L. Glover, writing in a forthcoming review in The New York Times Book Review said the experiment largely worked, resulting in a “story of lifesaving music and heartbroken maternity” that is “engaging from start to finish.”
“Some Sing” is the first novel by Ms. Shange, who is also a prolific poet and playwright, since 1994’s “Liliane: Resurrection of the Daughter,” about a young black artist’s struggle with racism and maternal abandonment. It gives readers “another family to turn to when things look bleak,” Ms. Shange said.
Bleak is how her own situation looked beginning in 2004. She began to have trouble with her balance and her speech and eventually received a diagnosis of having had a series of minor strokes. At her worst, she was unable to talk, read or write. Her speech is now audible but slowed, and her balance and dexterity are impaired.
Deciding to work with her sister had its genesis long before the stroke. In the 1970s a television and film producer approached Ms. Shange with the idea of a mini-series that would trace the history of black music through the role of women. Ms. Shange turned to Ms. Bayeza, whose stage works addressing black history include “Amistad Voices,” “Club Harlem,” and “The Ballad of Emmett Till.”
The two quickly sketched an outline for the arc of the story but shelved it for many years as life and other projects intervened. In the mid-’90s, they renewed the writing at the urging of Ms. Shange’s long-time editor at St. Martin’s, Michael Denneny.
“We grew up with stories like these,” Ms. Bayeza said of the novel’s tales. The sisters were raised in St. Louis and in Lawrence Township, N.J., the oldest of four children of a surgeon, Paul T. Williams, and Eloise O. Williams, a social worker and educator who also had a fondness for the arts. As young adults they jettisoned their given names for African ones.
While their parents are now deceased, the sisters can trace their father’s family line to 1757 with the arrival of two African brothers in the slave-holding territory of New Jersey. Their mother’s side was researched back to 1800 and Filis, an enslaved woman who traveled with her owners to South Carolina.
The story of how Betty Mayfield, a former slave travels to blackmail her white former owners, comes from real-life family lore, according to the sisters. Another character, Raymond Minor, reflects the life of their grandfather, a builder who passed for “black Irish” to get into the carpenter’s union in New York.
Both sisters are single now. Ms. Shange has an adult daughter and Ms. Bayeza does not have children. Their relationship is “symbiotic,” Ms. Bayeza said, close enough that they trusted each other to write without interference from the other. Ms. Bayeza confessed that some sections were hard to write; Ms. Shange said she went with the flow.
With a hefty first printing of 100,000, a national book tour and its selection as Essence magazine’s September book club pick, “Some Sing” might bring Ms. Shange her biggest splash since “For Colored Girls.”
A series of poetic monologues (Ms. Shange called it a “choreopoem”) about domestic abuse, abortion and self-love, among other topics, “For Colored Girls” is still steadily performed on college campuses, and is widely seen as influencing a generation of spoken-word poets, playwrights and performance artists.
Ms. Shange managed “to combine femininity and feminism” and wrap it in a downtown artistic sensibility, said Lynn Nottage, a playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for “Ruined.” She described Ms. Shange as “the first African-American female playwright I saw welcomed into the mainstream.”
For years, filmmakers talked about a movie version, but it came about courtesy of Mr. Perry, the writer and director of a successful string of films (and television series) about African-American life that some observers have criticized as clichéd and racially stereotypical. Much of his work has featured Mr. Perry in drag as the saucy matriarch Madea. Ms. Shange said she explicitly told Mr. Perry that Madea could not be in “Colored Girls.”
The film is scheduled to open in theaters on Nov. 5 with a starry ensemble cast that includes Phylicia Rashad, Whoopi Goldberg, Janet Jackson, and Thandie Newton. And no Madea.
Read the Full Article @ The New York Times
No comments:
Post a Comment