The literary value of these works extends far beyond the insight they offer into Shange’s life and artistic career.
Previously unseen writing from an essential Black author.
Shange is perhaps best known for her Obie Award–winning play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. But in addition to being a playwright, she was also a poet, a novelist, and a diarist, and when she died in 2018, she left behind a wealth of unpublished work. Harvard professor Imani Perry searched through these archives and chose the essays, poems, short stories, and plays presented in this collection. Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo movement and bestselling author, offers a foreword in which she explains how “Shange’s words gave me language for my own experiences with trauma and love.” Born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1948, the writer would ultimately change her name and become a prominent figure in the Black Arts Movement. In some of these pieces, Shange offers glimpses of her family—well-educated, financially well off, and keenly aware of racial difference. She describes a voracious love of reading that encompassed everything from Nancy Drew to Giovanni’s Room as well as the process of discovering the voice that begins to emerge in her early poems. Those acquainted with the author will see familiar themes emerge as she engages with colonialism, code switching, white supremacy, liberation politics, sexism, sexual violence, and collective trauma. She writes of desire and despair and revolution and Black joy using language and imagery that she was taught to hide from white people. In a series of short vignettes Perry gathers into a chapter called “Dark Rooms,” Shange speaks candidly of her struggles with mental health and her years in psychoanalysis, and she insists that therapy made her a better writer. Several plays, only one of which has been performed, are presented here. Shange continued writing and experimenting right up until her death, and the last section of this book contains poems and prose she produced between 1996 and 2018.
The literary value of these works extends far beyond the insight they offer into Shange’s life and artistic career.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9780306828515
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Legacy Lit/Hachette
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
