Ntozake Shange (1948–2018)

Perhaps not meant to be read in one sitting, any more than the recipes were meant to be all cooked at once. The food, the images, the meaning, should be consumed and digested as needed.

The narrative glides from Brooklyn to Brazil, Cuba to Nicaragua, as Shange mixes memories of revolution, rodeo, dancing, loving-- always cooking, always eating.

Early in the book, she cooks chitlins and pig’s tails in Brooklyn; soon after in the narrative—although earlier in her life, I think-- she flees show more when a famous Cuban dancer, a black man, performs in blackface. Flight from the dancer is reinterpreted later as the wrong reaction, and she learns to not be afraid of history, not to deny the history of slavery and the Diaspora. The food is a metaphor for the history and the history is a metaphor for the food; it is all caught up in a circle of signification. You can’t throw up the unpleasant bits; you have to find a use for them. Forgetting the past is a kind of starvation.

To know the food is to know the history.

Shange uses the food as she uses the history—she takes it and makes it her own. She does this by repeatedly relating a bit of her life, then a bit of history, and then a recipe or three. This description makes it sound formulaic, when it is anything but; things flow together, and the history and personal stories mesh together smoothly. And she writes the recipes in a way that let you know that you are supposed to take them and make them your own (she is not going to share her roux recipe with us); we are supposed to do the same with the history.

The dynamics of the Diaspora are knitted together—a cooking metaphor would work better here, probably, but I will just say I loved the juxtaposition of the roadless mountains of Nicaragua with the urban renewal highways of US cities, both used to separate peoples and weaken and isolate dissent. show less

Ntozake Shange's powerful and vivid fusion of poetry and drama deftly maps the internal battles of black female identity and the inadequacy of language to express it, rumbling with the fury of what it means to be both an invisible presence whose voice is not heard and whose worth is not valued, and a visible commodity whose body and very personhood is objectified and reduced to utility for others as victim, lover, mother, and slave. At the same, the narrative rallies against this with a show more fierce and lyrical rebellion wrought with sharp wit, humor, and hope. Any student of American literature, poetry, drama, gender studies, or race studies must consider and carefully weigh the importance of this work. show less

This choreopoem is somewhere between a poetry collection and a play. I found the introduction in this new updated edition incredibly helpful, because while I feel like I have seen this book around and been aware of it for ages, I didn't really know anything about it. The introduction described how this grew from a collection of poems into a performance piece, and then how it was updated over time.

This book is that harrowing kind of beautiful, that gives dignity by bearing witness to people show more living through difficult/impossible situations, that recognizes people fighting for their joy where they can find it, people surviving how they can.

The introduction also places the work in time, from its very beginnings in the mid-seventies to the way audience reactions have changed over time, to the legacy it has created for itself.

If it isn't clear, while I would have enjoyed this collection without the introduction, that context and history increased my understanding/connection/enjoyment of this piece several-fold.

This is beautiful but difficult. Please check the content warnings.

Recommended for fans of The Vagina Monologues, Shonda Rhimes, The Color Purple show less

"We came here hungry, trying to fill our souls and stomachs with anythin'll sustain us ever since." This small delicious and provocative pastiche by the recently deceased Ntozake Shange is unique and strangely beguiling in equal measure. Her love of food and history and how they speak to each other is the underlying reality -yet her book is almost like a dream revel. Generosity and memory always serve well in a food memoir and they are plentiful here -though this goes way beyond cooking and show more eating. This is a book born of rich pain and searing experiences both of the author and the many cultures she encounters throughout. It is not new -having been first published in 1998 - but seems fresh and relevant and also wise. Her voice certainly left us too soon yet can be found here bounding and alive. I close this review with a piece of advice found herein - "If you forget the cayenne. may God have mercy on your soul." Amen to that. show less