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Article: Ntozake Shange
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- March 31, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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DON'T COUNT on what feels real today, a Pirandello character
warns, for by tomorrow all reality will slip into illusion. Ntozake
Shange seems to work the other way around: She pulls illusions from
her grab bag one by one to build a time and place that feels as
certain as a childhood memory. She may not think she is a linear
person, but as an African-American fiction writer, she has
engineered worlds.
She was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, N.J. in 1948. Her
father was a doctor in the air force; her mother a social worker.
She spent her early years in a segregated military base in upstate
New York. When the Korean War was over, her father moved the family
to St. Louis, where he ...