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NAPPY EDGES by Ntozake Shange

NAPPY EDGES

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Pub Date: Sept. 27th, 1978
Publisher: St. Martin's

The author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf has produced an energetic, provocative book of poetry. Using the work as a vehicle for confronting life, Shange provides a sense of immediate contact with a volatile and expressive set of emotions. In ""Night Letter #3: ""the telephone company is harassin me in my/ sleep everybody keeps callin/ 'hello hello' old lovers I never want to see/ lovers i'm dyin to meet. . . ."" The music is relentlessly rhythmic, and insistent to the point where the poems seem to be losing power by not being read aloud: ""every 3 minutes a woman is beaten/ every five minutes a/ woman is raped/ every ten minutes/ a lil girl is molested/ yet i rode the subway today. . . ."" Shange's concerns remain inseparably political and personal, her music distinctive, her method of expression emotional and tempered with enough objectivity to avoid rhetoric. A fine show,