Poet, Novelist, Author Of 'For Colored Girls' Ntozake Shange Dies At 70

NEW YORK (AP) -- Playwright, poet and author Ntozake Shange, whose most acclaimed theater piece is the 1975 Tony Award-nominated play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf," has died. She was 70.

Her daughter, Savannah Shange, says the playwright died on Saturday. She didn't not reveal a cause of death.

Shange's "For Colored Girls" is a heart-felt series of poems set to music describing racism and sexism, and has been influential to generations of progressive thinkers, from (hash)MeToo architect Tarana Burke to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage. After learning of her death, Nottage called Shange "our warrior poet/dramatist."

"For Colored Girls" played some 750 performances on Broadway -- only the second play by an African-American woman -- and was turned into a film by Tyler Perry starring Thandie Newton and Kerry Washington.

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