As a whole, the colors function as a way to characterize the women to the audience. The naming system in the choreopoem—using colors for the women and names for the men—creates a larger, more complex discussion about women of color being characterized in society by the color of their skin first and foremost. When the women all come together, they create a rainbow: a culmination of varied experiences, all from different women of color. As the title states, "the rainbow is enuf." This makes a statement about women of color, or more specifically black women, being whole people independently of the color of their skin. It also comments on the strong bonds of friendship and shared experiences within the black community, specifically among black women.

The women are all identified in relation to a specific color, and each color represents an emotion. The various women in red, blue, brown, and green each have a deeply important set of experiences and emotions to share with the audience. Their names (or lack thereof) create a sense of otherness about them, which the playwright underscores in the poetic form of the choreopoem. This is reminiscent of muses in Greek mythology, each standing as an embodiment of a particular emotion.

One specific, strong example is the Lady in Brown. She represents the emotions associated with the loss of a sense of belonging, such as isolation and grief for oneself. She exists as a kind of supernatural being associated with death, and the choreopoem emphasizes the ethereal feel of her existence even more than it does for the other women. She opens and closes the play.

Color symbolism is often a very important part of theatrical or cinematic design. While some colors may have multiple meanings, there are some commonalities. In this play, the use of color for visual impact is related to the play's commentary on how color is seen and experienced, both in terms of the specific examples of visual color used and in the way color relates to race; this is seen through "colored" girls with dark skin and the notion of someone being "colored" as a way of inhabiting the status of an outsider or Other.

The different characters are referred to with names like "Lady in Yellow"; this character embodies the bright energy of yellow, as she is a dance teacher who loves wearing flamboyant clothing, but yellow also signifies fear and betrayal. This character relates the terrifying experience of being violently raped by a man she is dating and the experience of fear afterwards. The "Lady in Red" watches a man threaten to kill her children if she does not marry him; the color red is associated with love, anger, violence, and passion, and all of these emotions are present in this character's story. The "Lady in Purple" tells of getting a back-alley abortion and dying from the experience; purple is a color often associated with death. It is possible to draw a great deal of symbolic meaning from the colors used to represent these characters and their experiences.

This choreopoem, twenty separate poems set to music, is one of my favorites. Six of the seven women represent colors of the rainbow, and the seventh symbolizes the black woman. The rainbow is a symbol of the different life experiences and identities of black women.  Enotes provides a quote from Shange, the poet and dramatist, from an interview she gave:

The rainbow is a fabulous symbol for me. If you see only one color, it's not beautiful. If you see them all, it is. A colored girl, by ray definition, is a girl of many colors. But she can only see her overall beauty if she can see all the colors of herself. To do that, she has to look deep inside her. And when she looks inside herself, she will find... love and beauty.

The "lady in brown", the only woman who is not a color of the rainbow, begins and ends the play.  Each of the other women represents a color of the rainbow and an experience and identity that is different. For example, the "lady in blue" is a racially mixed black woman in Harlem who suffers the pain of an abortion and lives in fear of being raped. The "lady in red" watches in horror as her boyfriend dangles her two children out of a window until she agrees to marry him. She tells him she will, and he drops the children anyway. The other women, different colors of the rainbow, tell their stories as well. Together, they are a combination of the totality of the black woman. In the "Themes" section of the Study Guide, Enotes best expresses each role:

Facets of the black woman from gender- and socially-oppressed victim to triumphant spell-weaver and self-actualized person combine to portray a rainbow of possible selves that celebrate the black female identity.