We regret to inform you that the Ntozake Shange performance originally scheduled for April 21 had to be postponed due to illness and will be rescheduled at a later date.

Series: Lecture

Open Mic at 6:30 p.m.
Spoken Word performance at 7:00 p.m.
Ntozake Shange, reading "Sweet Breath of Life" at 7:30 p.m.

This is a community event that bridges UTD and the Dallas metroplex by combining spoken word with choreopoem, culture with education, and art with life. “Sweet Breath of Life” is the opportunity to link the past with the present by providing a chance to experience this world-renowned, outstanding, and unapologetic pioneer of spoken word. Be part of an event that will inspire you, take your breath away and leave you proud of being alive.

America's most lyrical African-American voice, playwright, novelist, poet and performer, Ntozake Shange is one of the most exciting and important writers of our time. Her most outstanding work, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf, has been presented as a Broadway play, a best-selling book, and a PBS television special.

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"Ms. Shange has a good ear for language and a sharp eye for the behavior and customs of black people; there is intelligence at work in Colored Girls, but more important, there is texture, the feel, and raw emotions of the modern black woman who, against great odds, fights for her integrity and her self-respect”
– Edwin Wilson, The Wall Street Journal

Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey on October 18, 1948. In 1971 she changed her name to Ntozake Shange which means "she who comes with her own things" and "she who walks like a lion" in Xhosa, the Zulu language. Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother was an educator and a psychiatric social worker. The Williams were upper middle class African Americans whose love of the arts contributed to an intellectually stimulating childhood for Shange and her three siblings. Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, and W. E. B. Du Bois were among the frequent guests at her parents' house.

In 1966 Shange enrolled at Barnard College and separated from her husband, a law student. She attempted suicide several times. Nonetheless, she graduated cum laude in American Studies in 1970 and entered the University of Southern California at Los Angeles, where she earned a master's degree in American Studies in 1973.

While living in California and teaching humanities and women's studies courses at Mills College in Oakland, the University of California Extension, and Sonoma State College, Shange began to associate with poets, teachers, performers, and black and white feminist writers who nurtured her talents. Shange and her friends began to perform their poetry, music, and dance in and around the San Francisco Area. Shange also danced with Halifu Osumare's company. Upon leaving the company she began collaborating with Paula Moss on the poetry, music, and dance that would become for colored girls. Moss and Shange left California for New York and performed for colored girls in a Soho jazz loft and later in bars in the lower East Side. Producer Woodie King Jr. saw one of these shows and helped director Oz Scott stage the choreopoem Off-Broadway at the New Federal Theatre where it ran for eight months, after which it moved to the New York Shakespeare Company's Anspacher Public Theatre, and then to the Booth Theatre.

In addition to her plays, she has written poetry, novels, and essays. She has taught at California State College, the City College of New York, the University of Houston, Rice University, Yale, Howard, and New York University. Among her many awards are an Obie, a Los Angeles Time Book Prize for Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize.
Ntozake Shange is the Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Florida.