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

This book wasn't written for most people - give the title another look - but it's a living "choreopoem" whose story is important for anyone to know. The carefully crafted group of twenty-something poems paint the stories of multiple black women, where the language of race, ethnicity, gender, humanity, bodies are woven together. This "choreopoem" is a musical theatre piece and one of the first of a black woman to run on Broadway; it featured the stories of seven women, nameless to the audience but distinct to them by the different colors Shange has given them - i.e the Woman in Red, the Woman in Purple. Their stories and life experiences with society's harms upon their beings differ vastly and the capacity of the writer to draw out the complexity she does in this small volume leaves a lasting impact. Above all, it gives hope in the form of these women's resilience.