For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf at Miami University

Structurally, For Colored Girls is a series of 20 poems, collectively called a "choreopoem". "Shange's poetry expresses the many struggles and obstacles African-American women face throughout their lives. It is performed by a cast of seven women characters each of whom is only known by a color: "Lady is Yellow", "Lady in Purple" etc. The poems deal with love, abandonment, rape and abortion,embodied by each woman's story. e.g. Lady in Blue's visceral account of a woman who chooses to have an abortion, and Lady in Red's tale of domestic violence. The end of the play brings together all of the women for "a laying on of hands" in which Shange evokes the power of womanhood as the Lady in Red begins the mantra "I found God in my myself/and I loved her/I loved her fiercely."