This is not true of Shange, nor is it any longer true, it seems to me, of the rising generation of important black novelists and poets. & though none of the above is true, a black writer can get away with/ abscond and covet for him or herself/ the richness of his or her person/ long before a black musician or singer cd." "we, as a people, or as a literary cult, or a literary culture/ have not demanded singularity from our writers. She is a mistress of the color, shape and ringing, accurate imagery of their thought and their speech.īut her voice in this novel is entirely her own, an original, spare and primary- colored sound that will remind readers of Jean Toomer's Cane. Shange is primarily a poet, with a blood-red sympathy for and love of her people, their folk as well as their sophisticated ways, their innocent, loving goodness as much as their lack of immunity to powerful evil. The play and the poetry might have prepared us for the beauty and force of Sassafras, Cypress & Indigo. In 1978 she published a volume of poetry, with some prose, called Nappy Edges, a book dedicated to the same three sisters whose names form the title of this, her first novel. Shange is the author of the successful play, for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (1975), a moving work full of choral poetry and genuine evocation of feminine black experience.
And Cypress, a trained dancer, goes to New York, loves both men and women, experiences black, exciting, violent New York City, and dreams of black women's liberation, for herself, her mother, her ancestors. Her older sister Sassafras is, like her mother, a skilled artisan in weaving and making hangings, a free spirit who gravitates to the West Coast, forms a faithful alliance with a n'er-do-well lover Mitch and becomes a deeply believing member of the spiritual New World Collective.
She has too much "South in her" she believes in the magic of her beloved Aunt Haydee the midwife she thinks her dolls are alive and talking to her as she talks to them briefly, she becomes a member of a motorcycle gang. Indigo is a mad little "girl-child," just turned 12 and silent except with her dolls to whom she talks and who talk to her. "COLORED" HILDA EFFANIE has three daughters with husband Alfred: Sassafras, Cypress and Indigo. Is at work on a critical biography of Willa Cather.
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