SOURCE: "Interview with Ntozake Shange," in Massachusetts Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 687-696.

In the following interview, Lyons questions Shange about the various criticisms of her work that have been launched by feminists, and about her own perspective on the role of gender in her writing.

[Lyons:] colored girls raised a furor in the 70s. In addition to much acclaim and many awards, you were attacked as a traitor to your race and put down as a writer and a black woman. Reflecting on that reaction now, ten years later, how do you feel about having been positioned as an angry young black feminist?

[Ntozake Shange:] I think it's O.K. to have been what I was. I'm not sure that I'm still not.

Has it affected your writing?

I think on a couple of things I got very pointedly satirical about people, for example in "Just...