“Black feminist discourse of power in Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf  depicts the struggle of black women through a rainbow of experiences.  The chorepoem focuses on how the patriarchal discourse leads to their suffering and how they were able to claim back their identities as black females who only need to be loved and appreciated. Shange’s poetry expresses the many struggles and obstacles that African- American women face throughout their lives.”

Many of us white women can relate on a smaller, safer scale. We are experiencing and recovering from similar traumas; assault, depression, abuse, diminishment, voicelessness, loss of identity. Velda widens the scope to one that includes us all and suggests we title our own stories and offers suggestions:

WRITE YOUR OWN PLAY . . . THESE TITLES MAY OR MAY NOT FIT

1. For Women Who Consider Asphyxiation When Trauma Overwhelms Your Soul
2. For Women Who Want to Run Away from Home When the Covenant Binds You
3. For Women Who Trust Other Women Only to Get Used and Broken
4. For Women Who Live in Community But Find Themselves Isolated and Lonely
5. For Women Who Give and Give and Give and Give and Find Themselves Empty
6. For Women Who Want to Re-Write the Rules When Men Are Clueless and God is Silent
7. For Women Who Smile and Smile and Smile, But Are Weeping and Crying, Sobbing, and Wailing on the Inside
8. For Women Who Ask Permission to Speak But Never Get to Speak
9. For Women Who are Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired
10. For Women Who Never Get to Hear The Bible From a Woman’s Perspective
11. For Women Who Are Know What Freedom Is And Are Willing to Empower and Free Others
12. Velda offers us encouragement and hope and commissions us to find our truest, deepest selves.