The Rainbow and Colored Girls

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In the physical sense, a rainbow appears after a storm in the sky. It is made up of seven different colors. As it forms an arch, we may look at its shape as being a segment of a complete circle. From the rainbows physical dimensions, Shange draws out other qualities that suit the fluidity and logic of her choreopoem. While it can appear a simple natural phenomenon we take for granted, Shanges choreopoem delivers the rainbow as a complex sustaining figure which forecasts a change in the weather and a change in the life of `the colored girls.' The rainbow is a powerful symbol in Shange's choreopoem. It is not only beautiful in one sense, but it's meaning is rather complex. There is more to the rainbow than its seven colors.

The title of Shanges choreopoem, For colored girls who have considered suicide when the Rainbow is Enuff reverberates with a sense of negativity. This is only surface scratching because when you read and study the contents of this narrative it becomes really an announcement of a victory for `colored girls'. These `colored girls' considered suicide, and for anything to be enuff to pull them away from killing themselves it must be a powerful force and it must hold a promise for fulfilling their desires. The rainbow signifies a move away from death into a happier life. The power of the force is greater than death. It is a life-giving force. The figure of the rainbow traverses race, color and class because it arches over all after the storm. The universality of the rainbow means it is recognizable. The rainbow figures in Christian religion in Genesis chapter 6-9 of the bible, where the rainbow is a token of a covenant from God to Noah that he will never destroy the earth by flood again. After 40 d...

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...o considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuff "offers a personal testimony of survival and spiritual health." P.29 Having attempted suicide four times; Shange writes with the deliberate full intensity of a survivor who places herself at the forefront in defense of `colored girls' who have or who may consider suicide. The defense is a collective effort to provide sustenance through guidance and supportive feeding of the `colored girls' desires to be loved, to be educated, to be actively identified, to be protected, and to know when these rights to life are abused and how to fight for themselves and their family.

Selecting the basis of uniformity as a commonality, I propose that what the `colored girls' want is cast within the contents, the structure, and the style of the choreopoem and the presentation of the choreopoem as an expressive form of shared desires.

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