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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Ntozake Shange died (27/10/2018)
Date: Sun, 27 Oct 2024 23:22:30 +1300
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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American playwright and poet.
Born Paulette Linda Williams in Trenton New Jersey, 1948,
to an upper-middle class family who encouraged her interest in the arts.

Her new name (1970), chosen with the help of two South African friends, 
is Xhosa, glossed as "She who comes with her own things", "She who walks 
like a lion" (Wiki).

Crystal quotes from a poem 'lady in brown':

de library was right down from de trolly tracks
cross from de laundry-mat
thru de big shinin floors & granite pillars
ol st. louis is famous for
i found toussaint
....

This is about discovering the 18th century Haitian revolutionary leader 
Toussaint l'Ouverture in the public library in St.Louis, after nothing 
in the children-and-young-people section seemed relevant to her.

In 2010 she was diagnosed with a neurological disorder which required 
her to re-learn or adjust many skills, including writing. In an 
interview she complained

"I have a new computer that does things without me asking...I don't have 
control over it, so the way I used to play with words on a page is very 
difficult for me now...it also spell-checks me, so I can't write Black 
English or Spanglish..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntozake_Shange