getmygoat

A couple weeks ago I read the choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf by Ntozake Shange. It consists of several poems of varying lengths, compiled together in the form of a play. Each story is told by a nameless “colored girl” who is identified by the hue of her dress. Some tell several stories, some only one or two; some tell sad stories, others stories of triumphs. It’s only 64 pages long (excluding foreword), so I plowed right through it.

Reading for colored girls affected me immensely; I laughed, I raged, I called out “You go, girl!” I made note of segments I want to quote on my social networking page, and I recommended the book to friends.

Then in my Black Women Writers class, the teacher showed us a video. The order was mixed up, and the settings were more elaborate than the instructions in the text indicated, but I also enjoyed that, and I reacted a little more strongly to each piece.

Finally I got the chance to see a local production of the piece. I did not actually cry at the end, but I came very close. By far, the live performance was the most moving, and it was very different from the film version (and both, in turn, were different from my interpretation as I read).

As a white woman, these stories are not about me. Shange intended this piece to be of, for, and by women of color, but she recognized that many of the struggles black women encounter on a daily basis are ones that women of every walk of life come across as well. Even though I was a spectator to this outpouring of emotion and honesty, I felt very much included when each actress fixed her eyes on mine. It was truly cathartic, and I drove home enveloped in a sense of serenity I had not experienced in a very long time.

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