Lost in Language and Sound

Lost in Language and Sound is a vibrant and vital collection that celebrates the three most important muses in the life and work of Ntozake Shange: language, music, and dance. In this deeply personal book, the celebrated writer reflects on what it means to be an artist, a woman, and a woman of color through a beautiful combination of memoir and essay. She describes where her love for creative forces began in her childhood home, a place where imagination reigned and boredom wasn't allowed. The essays tell stories ranging from the poignant origin of her celebrated play For Colored Girls to why Shange needed to deconstruct the English language to make that production work; from the intensity of the female experience and the black experience as separate entities to the difficulty of living both lives simultaneously; from the intense love of jazz bestowed on her by her father to a similar obsession with dance, which came from her mother.