Where There is Woman...There is Magic.

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuff  is a choreopoem/stage play originally choreographed to music that explores issues of sexism, racism, poverty, and other similar issues from a black woman’s point of view.  There is a character for each color of the rainbow, and also a lady in brown.  In my opinion, For Colored Girls discusses pertinent issues that black women have dealt with in both past and present, and also issues we will continue to face in the future.  I see the piece as timeless.

When I read it at the age of 20, I felt like I found a little piece of myself in each character’s identity.  It is extremely hard to not feel a connection with one or more of these perfectly imperfect ladies.  From stories of anger and heartbreak, to finding an identity, to coping with harsh realities, there is a story or poem for every woman both young and old.  I read For Colored Girls once all the way through, but I pick it up often and flip to whichever excerpt I feel most closely relates to my mood or reality at that particular time. It never gets old to me.  Read it and you’ll find yourself transforming into Lady in Red or Lady in Blue, or whosoever you choose. They laugh.  They cry.  They Scream. They shout. They dance.  And I do the same when I read sometimes.  It is really that captivating.   The storylines may sound depressing, but the undertone screams beauty, maturity, strength and positivity amidst a harsh reality. Every ambitious girl should read it.  

What I love most is that the women deal with and express emotions so openly in the book that some black women usually suppress behind this facade of toughness, yet the strength in each woman is still evident.

My copy is special to me because like a lot of the books I read, it is a hand me down from one of my parents.  Weathered pages that have turned yellow.  Still in the ancient typewriter font, with my mother’s personal notes and thoughts from when she read it decades ago in the margins.  Copyright 1975.  =)

Unlike my parents, I have never seen the stage play so until I do this is the next best thing.   When I found out that a film adaptation would be made of Ntozake Shang’s For Colored Girls I was excited.   Then I thought twice about the so-called mastermind behind the film, Tyler Perry.  The play explores race, gender, sex, rape, abortion, abandonment and domestic violence all through poetry and very much from a feminist perspective.  Needless to say I was a bit uneasy about a man, especially Tyler Perry taking on this project. To be honest, I feel a certain way about some of his films and plays, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuff definitely explores more complex themes than he usually portrays in his work.  I just can’t get excited about the same characters and predictable plots of angry and bitter professional black women who have everything in the world (degrees, careers, wealth, establishment) besides a man, and who miraculously fall in love with their chauffeur or the mechanic from around the way. Really, Tyler?  Oh…and then there is that gallivanting grandmother who lives up to every negative stereotype known to my race, but I digress.  Please Tyler Perry…don’t mess something so sacred up.

In theatres November 5.  Go see it. But read it first please, Ambitious Girl.

"i found god in myself
and i loved her
i loved her fiercely"
— Ntozake Shange