Edelstein, Elana. “Honors Program Distinguished
Speaker Series: Arthur Flowers.” Inside Dominguez
Hills (December 2000/January 2001). Available
online. URL: http://www.csudhiedw/univadv/
IDH0I01/Honors_Speakers0101.html. Accessed
February 14, 2007.
Flowers, Arthur. Another Good Loving Blues. New
York: Ballantine Books, 1994.
Gilyard, Keith. Review of Liberation Memories: The
Rhetoric and Poetics of John Oliver Killens. Chicken
Bones (April 2003). Available online. URL: http://
http://www.nathanielturner.com.liberationmemories.
htm. Accessed December 23, 2006.
Jablon, Madelyn. “The Künstlerroman and the Blues
H e r o .” I n Black Metafiction: Self-Consciousness in
African American Literature, 50–80. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1997.
Pollard, Deborah Smith. “African American Holy-
ground in Another Good Loving Blues.” CLA Jour-
nal 44, no. 1 (September 2000): 65–87.
Schroeder, Patricia R. “Rootwork: Arthur Flowers,
Zora Neale Hurston, and the “Literary Hoodoo
Tradition.” African American Review 36 (Summer
2002): 263–272.
Deborah Smith Pollard
for colored girls who have considered
suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
Ntozake Shange (1976)
Poet, novelist, and playwright NTOZAKE SHANGE
originally read this “choreopoem,” as she called it, as
a series of narrative prose poems about the lives of
seven women—“colored girls”—of African descent.
Despite moments in the choreopoem when, faced
with an abortion after an “accidental” pregnancy,
faced with unfaithful or selfish male partners, faced
with the death of young children at the hands of a
male lover, the “colored girls” first consider suicide,
by the end of the play, they “find god in themselves
and love her fiercely.” Theirs is not the external
Christian God but rather a spirit of independence
and self-awareness that allows them to experience
the “rainbow” at the end of the storm. Modeled on
Judy Grahn’s seven-sequence poem about women
whose experiences make them anything but “com-
mon,” Shange’s work conjoins dance and poetry
to create a moment of public celebration wherein
her characters, after admitting their vulnerabilities,
fears, and disappointments, ultimately witness their
own triumphs. Their individual and shared stories
represented a milestone in American theater and in
black women’s writings.
While many critics and audiences applauded
Shange’s daring and unadorned truth about wom-
en’s experiences, others complained that, as form,
the choreopoem was a contrived convention that
ultimately left readers confused and disappointed.
In his review, John Simon concluded: “Is this po-
etry? Drama? Or simple tripe? Can you imagine
this being published in a serious poetry journal?
Would it have been staged if written by a white
male?” Others accused Shange of blatant black
male bashing in her representation of male char-
acters who are infidels, physical and sexual abus-
ers, and liars. The most disturbing moment in the
play—when Beau Willie Brown kills his two chil-
dren by dropping them from an apartment win-
dow—not only sent shock waves throughout the
viewing and reading audiences but also became
the focus for those who attacked Shange’s repre-
sentation of men. In subsequent works about Afri-
can-American women, Shange shows that writing
about men, irrespective of their behavior, is critical
to her objective. However, she maintains, her main
concern is the presentation of truth and possibil-
ity, not the negative representation of black men.
In the end, Shange tries to challenge women in
abusive relationships to accept responsibility for
their own physical and spiritual well-being.
A curricular staple in African-American theater,
American theater, and women’s studies courses, for
colored girls encourages discussions of racial and
gender identities, racial and gender stereotypes,
cultural allusions, communal and individual iden-
tities, narrative (non)linearity, spoken and written
language and identities, and language and emotion.
Self-identifying as “a poet in American theater,”
Shange comments on her goal as a writer, as a poet,
and as a storyteller: “quite simply a poem shd fill
you up with something/ cd make you swoon, stop
in yr tracks, change yr mind, or make it up. a poem
shd happen to you like cold water or a kiss” (72).18 8 for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf