Shange and the World Wide Feminist Coalition

It was hard to re-imagine the legendary, brilliant, and transformative Shange who is more of a symbol than a person to me, to be a human being that exists in the same room that I exist in. I don’t think I’ve ever had the honor of talking to, let alone eating lunch with and asking questions to any other person whose vast creativity shaped a generation. I am deeply shook and grateful to have shared space with Ntozake Shange. Through her bright storytelling, I image she lived the life that every aspiring creative Black radical woman wants to live: running from famous dance class to dance class (being idolized at each), reading poetry to crowds across the country, and celebrating and conversing with other famous and brilliant minds. I’m know I’m idolizing Shange’s life, but it was magical to see a glimpse of that reality and to see a glimpse of her mind, unedited. She didn’t answer questions like I’d expect, she added brilliant twists. When a classmate asked about different feminisms I expected her to go ahead and trash capitalist feminisms as I’ve seen many other radical speakers do before. Instead, while she acknowledged post-question that not all types of feminism are good or actually feminism, she thought of a world in which different people’s feminisms could converse with each other (not become one another), but form a coalition. She said something like this, “If men get to have the United Nations, we should get to have a feminist coalition.” While she says she can’t imagine a world that without oppression, I would think that a world-wide feminist coalition would be a part of that world. This is one of many of her thoughts that stuck with me past lunch.