RSVP for our April Book Club discussion on Thursday, April 30th @ 6pm PST, hosted on ZOOM: Register here
APRIL BOOK:
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf
A Choreopoem by Ntozake Shange
From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater and on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired, and transformed audiences all over the country. Passionate and fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color and female in the twentieth century.
About the Author | Ntozake Shange
Playwright and author Ntozake Shange was born Paulette L. Williams on October 18, 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey to Paul T. Williams, an air force surgeon, and Eloise Williams, an educator and psychiatric social worker. Her family regularly hosted artists like Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Robeson, and W.E.B. DuBois at their home. Shange graduated cum laude with her B.S. degree in American Studies from Barnard College in New York City in 1970. While pursuing her M.A. degree in American Studies from the University of Southern California, Shange began to associate with feminist writers, poets and performers. In 1971, she adopted her new name, Ntozake, meaning “she who comes with her own things,” and Shange, meaning “she who walks like a lion,” from the Xhosa dialect of Zulu. She graduated from the University of Southern California in 1973. Ntozake Shange passed away on October 27, 2018.
We’ll be joined in our discussion by special guest
Bobbi Kindred, Cierra Green
author, actor, and storyteller
Bobbi Kindred, Cierra Green is a Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Ph.D. student at the University of Washington, Seattle. Their performance and written work is grounded in a Black Feminist praxis and centers the narratives of folk often on the periphery — tending towards performing in pieces written and performed by Black writers, such as For Colored Girls by Ntozake Shange, in which they embodied “Lady In Purple” in an iteration produced by the African-American Shakespeare Company (2018).
Storytelling via theatre, performance, and written work, is how they honor the wounds within themself that still gape, and how they invoke the spirit of their ancestors' tongue when they share communally, and they deeply believe in the power of storytelling to heal the inner child. They have also recently published their first book, “This (Boi)yant Body: Narratives of a queer Black boi and the waters that carry them”, and hope to continue to reveal the deep interconnection between Black agency, the spoken word as a means of subjectivity, and theater as a ritualistic practice — all crucially aiding in the liberation of Black folk.
Black Like Us is a virtual literary experience that allows NAAM’s community to connect through the works and writings of published Black authors and literary luminaries. NAAM will share titles for adults focused on personal narratives with the intent to catalyze a reimagined idea of oral traditions. We will culminate our reflections on the title through a facilitated discussion hosted each month through the video conferencing platform, Zoom.
Moderated by Moni Tep, NAAM Programs Coordinator
Moni Tep has been immersed in the Seattle arts and culture community since 2005 with a personal and professional practice of being a musician, healer based in ancestral practices, community mobilizer, and advocate for LGBTQ people, young people, Black people and people of color, women, along with everyone standing at the intersection of these identities, as she does herself. As program director and co-facilitator of a number of art programs in Seattle, WA, specifically focused around engagement from Black youth as well as a focus on intergenerational connections, Moni has been in the practice of developing curriculum and effective arts programming to engage and retain communities who are traditionally marginalized and underserved. Her roots are based in Seattle, WA with branches that reach to Oakland, CA, Brooklyn, NY and Toronto in Canada. She aligns herself with Black Constellation which consists of a unified cross-disciplinary guild of Soothsayers, Makers, Empaths, and Channels.