For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow is Enuf

for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf features seven nameless Black or African-American women living in the United States of America during the mid-to-late 1970s. Shange only identifies each woman by the color of the clothing that she wears: the lady in brown, the lady in yellow, the lady in purple, the lady in red, the lady in green, the lady in blue, and the lady in orange. Even though each woman identifies her location as “outside of” one of several major cities, this information doesn’t provide insight into character or setting because Shange does not consistently apply it.

For instance, the lady in blue identifies herself as outside of New York and later specifies that she was raised in New Jersey, while one of her monologues takes her to the Bronx. However, the lady in red identifies herself as outside of Baltimore, and later one of her performances is in Los Angeles. Similarly, the lady in brown is outside of Chicago, but one of her monologues takes place in Saint Louis. Location does not create character insight, and the women do not take on a singular trajectory that forms a narrative. Aside from a scattering of references to music that came out before or during the 1970s, Shange’s pieces also exist outside of time. Some of the poems take place in the past, like “toussaint.” Others seem as if they could be ever-present, such as “one,” “latent rapists,” “abortion cycle #1.”

Instead, the women must be considered together as an ensemble. Supporting her intention to create a work that gives voice to the Black woman and tells her stories, Shange’s faceless women become any Black woman located in or near any major city in the United States. Their stories, taken together, explore the various paths and experiences that any woman could have had at that time. Shange achieves this universality by focusing on universal experiences: coming of age, falling in and out of love, and healing from heartbreak, as well as the more painful experiences that women share and create a healing community around, such as domestic violence and sexual abuse. Together, the many speakers in Shange’s poems represent a spectrum of the urban Black woman’s experience both in the 1970s and to this day, since many of the topics Shange explores transcend time and space.