for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf (Masterplots II: African American Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Ntozake Shange
- First Published: 1975
- Type of Work: Play
- Type of Plot: Feminist
- Time of Work: The 1970’s
- Setting: Outside the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Baltimore, San Francisco, Manhattan, and St. Louis
- Principal Characters: Lady in Red, Lady in Blue, Lady in Orange, Lady in Purple, Lady in Green, Lady in Brown, Lady in Yellow
- Genres: Social realism, Poetry, Drama, Verse drama
- Subjects: African Americans, Values, 1960’s, 1970’s, United States or Americans, Racism, Sexism, Race, Sex or sexuality, Murder or homicide, Poetry or poets, Rape, Inner cities or inner-city life, Violence, Feminism, Women’s issues, Women, City life, Abortion, Gods or goddesses
- Locales: United States
The Play
Written to “sing a black girl’s song … to sing her rhythms/ carin/ struggle/ hard times/ [to] … let her be born,” this play is a compilation of twenty poems performed by seven African American actresses. The poems are unified by a series of similar shared experiences of the actresses, who present a collage of experiences that articulate what it means to be a young black woman in the modern world. The play addresses the physical and emotional violence that is committed against women of color as well as addressing all women’s potential to triumph over the...
[The entire page is 3844 words long]
