Book excerpt: NAACP Image Award Finalist for Outstanding Literary Work From the poet, novelist, and cultural icon behind the award-winning and extraordinary Broadway play, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, comes “a kaleidoscopic journey through black womanhood” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) and a moving bilingual collection of new and beloved poems. In this stirring collection of more than sixty original and selected poems in both English and Spanish, Ntozake Shange shares her utterly unique, unapologetic, and deeply emotional writing that has made her one of the most iconic literary figures of our time. With a clear, raw, and affecting voice, Shange draws from her experience as a feminist black woman in American to craft groundbreaking poetry about pain, beauty, and color. In the bestselling tradition of Rupi Kaur’s Milk and Honey, Wild Beauty is more than a poetry collection; it is an exquisite call to action for a new generation of women, people of color, feminists, and activists to follow in the author’s footsteps in the pursuit of equality and understanding. As The New York Times raves, “Ntozake Shange writes with such exquisite care and beauty that anyone can relate to her message.”