For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf

The piece “dark phrases” introduces the choreopoem’s theme of Black girls and women reclaiming their voices and telling their own stories. The poem’s central image features a Black girl dancing to a song “without rhythm/ no tune” and “another song with no singers/ / lyrics/ no voices” (3). This tuneless song represents the world’s silencing Black women and girls. The dancer exists, people can see her, but her song doesn’t make a sound. In this image, Shange alludes to stories that may feature Black women and girls, but the women don’t get to speak for themselves if they ever get to speak at all. When they do appear in art and literature: “i can’t hear anythin // but maddening screams // & the soft strains of death” (4), meaning those stories have no life besides tragedy. To Shange, those stories render Black girls lifeless. Shange’s speaker calls for someone to “sing [the Black girl or woman’s] rhythms // carin/ struggle/ hard times // sing a song of her life” (4) and to sing a “song of her possibilities” (5). She calls for a story that gives Black women and girls a life beyond tragedy. Essentially, the poem calls for a rebirth and a remaking of Black women’s public image, and Shange asserts that she will do it in this choreopoem.

To that end, many of Shange’s poems stand in direct contradiction to the stereotypes espoused about Black women. Many pieces focus on the interior experiences of Black women, allowing them to speak their fears, their worries, their heartaches, and their desires aloud. When the women speak for themselves, those stereotypes break open and reveal the complexity and humanity of the women. They take on new dimensions that were previously obscured by assumptions and stereotypes. With these revelations from the mouths of Black women, Shange forces the audience to confront what they think they know about Black women. Both “one” and the “no more love poems” suite are primary examples. In both of those poems, Shange subverts the Jezebel stereotype that depicts Black women as sexually promiscuous. In “one,” the woman takes on the role of a femme fatale, but the speaker hints that her motivation is anger, revenge, and longing for fulfillment. In “no more love poems,” the speakers address stereotypes about Black women’s emotions head on.

By writing in African American Vernacular English, Shange makes an aesthetic, cultural, and political choice to use the authentic voices of Black women. Writing in Standard American English would not have achieved Shange’s goal to create an authentic voice for Black women and girls. Those women include her elders, to whom she dedicates this choreopoem. She purposely wrote in a language that they could hear themselves in, which is why she chose the term “colored,” even though Black was increasingly considered more acceptable. On the page, she spells words the way they might be spoken aloud, selecting universal pronunciations that most, if not all, Black Americans might recognize in speech. Cases in point: “of” becomes “uv,” “with” becomes “wit,” “enough” and becomes “enuf.”

These poems also lack punctuation marks, a political and artistic choice that Shange makes deliberately. Artistically, this choice allows the audience to experience a stream-of-consciousness rendering of the speaker’s words. Stream-of-consciousness writing allows the audience to enter the speaker’s mind and to have a more intimate understanding of the speaker’s emotional experiences. The style draws readers in, and Shange ensures that they will come away with a vivid depiction of Black girls and women. Shange further defines her near-universal voice for Black women and girls by placing her representatives of Black women (the ladies in their colors) in or near metropolitan cities that historically have large or majority Black populations.

for colored girls features several first-person monologue poems in which the speaker addresses a specific audience and directly demands a return of her heart, her love, or her essence. These poems are the most literal examples of Black women using their voices to reclaim their power. For example, in the “no more love poems” suite, the speakers each address a former lover telling him who she is, what she offered him, the pain she felt at having her love rejected. But the speakers also resolve to not be “dead” like the woman in “dark phrases.” On page 43, the lady in orange says, “& i lived // and loved that way & kept sorrow on the curb/ allegedly // for you/ but i know i did it for myself.” For her, the aversion to being emotive caused her to silence herself. She did it as an act of self-preservation that she now regrets. At the end of the suite, the lady in blue declares, “my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face” (45), which stands in direct contrast to the previous poems where the women listed all the ways they gave their love away at their own expense. This final line becomes a chant, a song, and a dance in which the women celebrate their return to life. In “no more love poems #1,” the lady in orange declares that the words are a requiem for herself. This celebratory ending shows that the requiem has given way to a rebirth of personal power. The “no more love poems” suite represents the kind of song the speaker begs for in “dark phrases.”

Several pieces in for colored girls function as public service announcements from Black women. “latent rapists” features three performers who stand as representatives for all women. They earnestly and honestly express a view of rape that stood in direct contradiction to the prevailing attitudes and beliefs of the day. Shange ensures that her poem speaks as a direct rebuttal to those attitudes by voicing them in the play. Then, the women describe their reality, sharing that the rapist is often someone they know, men “who make elaborate mediterranean dinners // & let the art ensemble carry all ethical burdens // while they invite a coupla friends over to have you” (19). Shange’s choice to include this piece featuring women speaking boldly and honestly about such a taboo topic is an act of reclaiming Black women’s power by having them speak aloud what others would rather have kept silent.