Customer Reviews

For colored girls who have considered suicide, when the rainbow is enuf : a choreopoem

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This is her best book in my opion!! It has something for everyone. Full of colorful characters that everyone can relate to with a no holding back choice tongue. Travel through experiences from a woman sick and tired of hearing her man's apologies to another woman's dilemma of watching her vietnam tortured boyfriend drop their children out the window. I think the beauty of this choreopoem is that every woman finds her little gold at the end of her own rainbow. Enjoy.

This book powerful and believable compared to the movie "For Colored Girls." The women are smart and proactive. The dialogue is both beautiful and visual

Shange's imagery is hypnotizing. She immediately creates a realm of intimacy between you, her word, and colored girls. Shange takes you through a personal journey of yourself through the girls.

shange uses the arts of poetry, music and dance to create a spectacular rainbow of beauty,sorrow , joy and pain brought to the reader in a sometimes funny , sometimes serious manner in "laugh but don't laugh" imagery she creates. it's a celebration of life, struggle and woman

Debuting in 1975, Ntozake Shange's experimental "choreopoem" play FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF is the stuff of theatrical legend: off-Broadway, on-Broadway, from university stages to community theatre playhouses, and at least two film versions. It is widely known and widely praised. But I must invoke a cautionary clause: nothing is more passe than something that used to be cutting-edge, and such is the case with FOR COLORED GIRLS, which may be regarded as the victim of its own success. It has spawned so many other similar efforts that it now seems dated, particularly given the plays "abused black woman" mindset--something that the audience hadn't really thought about in 1975 but which by 2011 we've had to the point of ennui.

The play itself, if such it can be called, is essentially a series of poems performed as interlocking monologues by a series of African-American women who are identified by the costume colors they wear: there is the Lady in Brown, Lady in Red, and so on. One by one they present the dominate experiences of their lives, beginning with the Lady in Yellow, who tells about how she lost her virginity in the back seat of a Buick on graduation night and rounding out with the Lady in Red, who has a horror story of a lover suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who kills her children by dropping them off a fifth-floor balcony. There are moments when the women sing together, moments when one or more dance together, and moments when they comment on the stories others present.

Poet-playwright Ntozake Shange has updated her original 1975 text to include references to America's participation in Middle East wars and HIV, while her stories are interesting, her poetry is less so: quite frankly she's no Sylvia Plath, no Maya Angelou, and while some of her images ring loud and resonate long, most are merely commmonplace, and FOR COLORED GIRLS doesn't so much seem to conclude as simply end. But it should be noted, and I go out of my way to note it with this uniquely celebrated work, that plays aren't really written to be read: they are intended to be heard and seen. It may be that FOR COLORED GIRLS plays much better than reads. But I rather doubt it. I found it a series of commonplace observations and I can't imagine that it will be anything else on the stage.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer