A collection of previously unpublished writing by the late author Ntozake Shange is coming this summer, Legacy Lit announced in a news release.
The Grand Central Publishing imprint will publish Sing a Black Girl’s Song: The Unpublished Work of Ntozake Shange. The collection is edited by Imani Perry, the Princeton professor and author whose books include Breathe: A Letter to My Sons and the National Book Award–winning South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon To Understand the Soul of a Nation. Tarana Burke, the activist who founded the #MeToo movement and wrote the memoir Unbound, will provide a foreword.
Shange is known for her 1976 play, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. She is the author of several other plays, as well as poetry collections, children’s books, and novels including Liliane, Betsey Brown, and Some Sing, Some Cry, co-written with Ifa Bayeza. She died in 2018, at the age of 70.
Sing a Black Girl’s Song, Legacy Lit says, will span genres, featuring poems, essays, plays, and short stories.
“Shange was both a groundbreaking and much beloved author and artist,” Perry said in a statement. “She was prolific and electrifying. It is such a gift to be able to bring even more of her transformative work to the public and in doing so to honor her place in the American literary pantheon.”
Sing a Black Girl’s Song is slated for publication on Sept. 12.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
