Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo is the story of three ‘colored girls,’ three sisters and their mama from Charleston, South Carolina: Sassafrass, the oldest, a poet and a weaver like her mother, gone north to college, living with other artists in Los Angeles and trying to weave a life out of her work, her man, her memories and dreams; Cypress, the dancer,who leaves home to find new ways of moving and easing the contractions of her soul; Indigo, the youngest, still a child of Charleston—’too much of the south in her’—who lives in poetry, can talk to her dolls, and has a great gift of seeing the obvious magic of the world.
Genre: Black Interest; Fiction
Subjects: African American Women; African American Women - Fiction; Afro-American Women; Charleston (S.C.); Mothers And Daughters; Novelists, American; Sisters
Publication History
| ISBN | 9780413519702 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 1982 |
| Publication Date | 1982 |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Not Rated |
| ISBN | 9780312699727 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 1983 |
| Publication Date | October 1983 |
| Publisher | St Martins Press |
| Format | Trade Paperback |
| No. of Pages | 224 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Not Rated |
| ISBN | 9780312140915 |
|---|---|
| Copyright Date | 1996 |
| Publication Date | January 15, 1996 |
| Publisher | Picador |
| Format | Trade Paperback |
| No. of Pages | 240 |
| Language | English |
| Rating | Not Rated |
Comment
Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo, published by St. Martin's Press in 1982, was the first full-length novel by Ntozake Shange, author of for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. It expands her 1976 novella Sassafrass and follows three sisters from Charleston, South Carolina, and their mother, Hilda Effania, as each daughter seeks her own way as a Black woman and artist.
The lesbian content belongs to the middle sister. Cypress, a dancer, falls into an intense affair with Idrina, who ends it when her longtime partner, Laura, returns, leaving Cypress adrift. It is one strand of a novel about women's lives and relationships rather than its center.