for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf

Description

Seven unnamed African American women, identified by the colors they wear, speak through a sequence of poetic monologues joined with dance and music. Their individual stories confront love, abandonment, rape, abortion, domestic violence, coming of age, and the struggle to claim authority over their own lives. Several poems expose sexual violence committed by acquaintances and the disbelief that often greets women who name it; others make room for desire, humor, solidarity, and self-recognition. Roughly twenty to twenty-two pieces accumulate into a unified choreopoem rather than a conventional plot. As voices answer and overlap, private pain becomes collective testimony, and sisterhood offers a language for survival and empowerment.

Themes