Wild Beauty

Starred review from October 16, 2017
Acclaimed poet, playwright, and novelist Shange, best known for her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf, takes readers on a kaleidoscopic journey through black womanhood in her first selected volume. Translated into Spanish by Alejandro Álvarez Nieves, the collection spans the course of her prolific 40-year career in both languages. The poems showcase vibrant narratives of black women who are neither solely saints nor sinners. For Shange, it is important to capture the inner lives of black women without judgment and provide a voice for those who have been oppressed by self-imposed silence. In the opening poem, she envisions a new type of deity: “we need a god who bleeds now/ whose wounds are not/ some small male vengeance/ some pitiful concession to humility.” Shange often deals with the consequences of failed dreams, as in the poem “Five”: “livin dreams’ll make ya crazy/ livin dreams’ll lead ya to the/ end/ s of yrself.” Shange’s ability to breathe life into myriad characters and voices is on display throughout the collection. And, despite the instances of disappointment, violence, and struggle, the poems all highlight hope, joy, and optimism. This is an exemplary representation of Shange’s body of poetic work.

November 15, 2017
Poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist Shange (lost in language &sound; or, how i found my way to the arts, 2011) brings together more than 50 selected poems from six previous collections, including for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1976), A Daughter's Geography (1983), and The Love Space Demands (1991). Here, too, are new works recently composed after health issues kept her from writing for six years, infusing this dynamic bilingual collection with resurgent joy and determination. Translator Alvarez Nieves details the challenges involved in finding the Spanish equivalents for Shange's colloquial, no-nonsense English, and the poet describes this book as a melange of the lives of colored people. Indeed, these powerfully swinging, jabbing, lamenting, testifying, and protesting poems deliver an array of voices sharing experiences sensual and violent, personal and communal, all catalyzed by the traumas and tragedies of racism and sexism and the transcendence of art, love, and hope. Dissent, sorrow, humor, and beauty coalesce in a galvanizing, timely, and timeless flow of creativity, valor, compassion, and wisdom.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)