Box 3

Scope and Contents From the Sub-Series: Subseries 1.2, Betsey Brown, 1983-1995, undated, includes copies of the published novel, multiple drafts, and scripts for the musical adaptation, including sheet music and notes. Betsey Brown, originally published as a novel in 1985 by St. Martin’s Press, presents the story of a young Black girl’s grappling with adolescence amidst racial integration of public schools in 1959 St. Louis, Missouri. The novel is drawn from...

Scope and Contents From the Sub-Series:

Subseries 1.3,daddy says, 1999-2003, undated, includes manuscripts, galley proofs, and editors’ notes. daddy says, published in 2003 by Simon and Schuster, Inc. is a young adult/children’s novel set in Texas that follows the struggles of two daughters of a rodeo family as they mourn the death of their mother amidst the pressures of adolescent life.

Scope and Contents From the Sub-Series: Subseries 1.18, Some Sing, Some Cry, 1977-2010, undated, includes extensive drafts, edits, rewrites, proofs, and correspondence. Published in 2010 and written by Shange and her sister, Ifa Bayeza, Some Sing, Some Cry is an epic novel telling the story of seven generations of a family of Black women in the U.S. Some Sing, Some Cry was originally titled How I Come By...

Scope and Contents From the Sub-Series: Subseries 1.25, Other and multiple works, 1996-2018, undated, includes materials related to other works by Shange (for which there were not enough items to constitute a subseries). This subseries also contains groupings of materials in which multiple works were originally arranged together (for example, photocopies of multiple excerpts or poems grouped and edited for performance or anthologies). Types of materials include photocopies of published works (some with notes), typewritten and...