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About this book

BETSEY BROWN is an ambitious work. Its intention is to weave the stories of several people of the same family together around a time and place crucial in shaping their ideas and destinies.
The novel unfolds through the growing pains of Betsey Brown (aged 13 3/4), the eldest female child in a brood belonging to Jane and Greer and living in a big old house in St Louis, USA. More... (© The Mick Sinclair Archive; )

Curriculum Resources

• Teacher's Guide
  http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/images/Books/ TeachersGuides/ 0312134347TG.pdf (Holtzbrinck Publishers; )
  
  
• Betsey Brown
  Additional Material, Students' and Teachers' Comments on Reading 'Betsey Brown'
  http://www.educeth.ch/english/readinglist/shangen/ (EducETH; )

About the author

Ntozake Shange was born Paulette Williams in Trenton, New Jersey on October 18, 1948. In 1971 she changed her name to Ntozake Shange which means "she who comes with her own things" and "she who walks like a lion" in Xhosa, the Zulu language. Her father was an Air Force surgeon and her mother was an educator and a psychiatric social worker. The Williams were upper middle class African Americans whose love of the arts contributed to an intellectually stimulating childhood for Shange and her three siblings. More... (© Broadway Theatre Archive; )

Websites about Ntozake Shange

• Shange, Ntozake: *1948 by The English Page
  Author, Betsey Brown, Poems
  http://www.educeth.ch/english/readinglist/shangen/ (EducETH; )
  
  
• Ntozake Shange
  Biography, notes on For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When The Rainbow Is Enuf, Critics
  http://www.bridgesweb.com/shange.html (Bridges Web Services; )
  
  
• Shange, Ntozake by Encarta Africana Staff
  http://www.africana.com/Utilities/Content.html?&../cgi-bin/banner.pl?banner=Arts&../Articles/tt_920.htm (Africana.com; )

Interviews with this author

• Back at you by Rebecca Carroll
  Ntozake Shange, poet, playwright, and fiery author of "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf," minces no words.
  http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JF95/carroll.html (MotherJones.com; )
  
  
• NTOZAKE SHANGE: Portrait of a Literary Feminist by Edward K. Brown II
  http://www.multifest.com/poetry/shange.htm (Multimanifestations; )