...A BLACK WOMAN’S JOURNEY: FOR COLORED GIRLS Created in 1975, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf, focuses on the struggles of black women not only from that era, but issues still pertaining to black women 35 years later. Shange’s powerful choreopoem is comprised of seven women trying to "sing a black girl's song…. Sing a song of life, she's been dead so long"(Shange 18), creating a voice for every woman. None of these women possess a name, only a color, to show that they represent all women of color. Shange includes themes of love, abandonment, sexuality, abortion, and domestic violence to emphasize what women in her community were and still are subjugated to. Through dance, poetry, and music these women slowly but surely find their true identity. Ntozake uses her work as a tool to empower all “colored girls” by creating these seven strong women that form a bond when they are able to find their identity as black women, and essentially in their journey make it to the end of their rainbows without committing suicide. When looking into Shange’s life there’s no question that situations, which she had observed day-to-day or experienced herself, were imposed on her writings. Born as Paulette Williams she was raised in a middle class family, which was not a childhood common for blacks. Her family moved to St. Louis and she attended a non-segregated school where she had to endure blatant racism at the mere age of eight years old. She rebelled...
Words: 2581 - Pages: 11
...For Colored Girls In this film, I believe I will be reviewing a movie that will provide motivation and encouragement to all women of color, not only for African American women, but other cultures as well. Because this is a Tyler Perry film, I also expect it to be very humorous. The film classification of this movie is fiction. The physical qualities of this film are music, live action, narration, color, background noise, and dramatization. The tone of this film is serious yet joyful. I chose serious because each experience the women went through was very sad and realistic. They were not funny, and were eye openers to me. I chose joyful because in the ending, every woman received her joy back. They were able to face their obstacles and make a decision to move past them. This film most certainly conveys its message effectively. As a tool of communication, the strengths were the various ways the writer made you feel as if you were actually in the film, each scene was very realistic. The weakness that I found in this film was the scene when both of the women, Tangie and Alice, were saying their poems at the same time. I was unable to understand either of the poems thoroughly. I wanted to hear them both out individually. The film maker wanted the audience to feel each woman’s experience, including their pain. The film appeared more to the viewer’s emotion. It made me feel a sense of hope for women. It made me view their circumstances differently, and also made me realize how strong...
Words: 719 - Pages: 3
...For Colored Girls Play Analysis For Colored Girls is a play written by Ntozake Shange at the peak of the black feminist movement, in 1975. It is a collection of poems that tell the story of seven women of color and how their lives interconnect. The play deal with deep subject matter such as rape, abortions, domestic abuse, and faith, as is delves into the lives of these women. The play ends as all of the women come together with an empowering scene about the strength in womanhood. How do struggles, specifically ones imposed on women such as rape and domestic abuse, create strength and empowerment that would have never been attained without enduring such life experiences? In For Colored Girls, all of the women find strength in each other and faith in order to overcome their individual struggles and find strength to continue on with life. They become stronger individuals that they once were and that strong power that they now posses is from believe in themselves and their ability to persevere. In the 2009 film, Precious, a young girl lives through torment as she grows up in section 8 housing with an abusive mother and father, but when she decides that she has had enough she breaks free to try to obtain the life she has always dreamed of. Precious can be understood within the context of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls because Precious endures many similar life experiences as the women of For Colored Girls. Precious is a sixteen year old girl who lives with her mother...
Words: 1085 - Pages: 5
...Recently, I had the pleasure of seeing one of Texas Southern University’s theatre department productions; For Colored Girls, Who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf. Written by Ntozake Shange and directed by Erika R. Walton, the play was performed marvelously at Ollington Smith Playhouse located in the heart of the historic black college. At first glance, the performance space looked more like an auditions holding place than somewhere to hold a production, but all in all it was an unforgettable experience. One feature of the play that really amazed me was that each actor was worth noting. The actors really made me believe they were the characters they were portraying. I was more specifically impressed on how the actors emotionally...
Words: 714 - Pages: 3
...For Colored Girls is a play written by Ntozake Shange at the peak of the black feminist movement, in 1975. It is a collection of poems that tell the story of seven women of color and how their lives interconnect. The play deal with deep subject matter such as rape, abortions, domestic abuse, and faith, as is delves into the lives of these women. The play ends as all of the women come together with an empowering scene about the strength in womanhood. How do struggles, specifically ones imposed on women such as rape and domestic abuse, create strength and empowerment that would have never been attained without enduring such life experiences? In For Colored Girls, all of the women find strength in each other and faith in order to overcome their individual struggles and find strength to continue on with life. They become stronger individuals that they once were and that strong power that they now posses is from believe in themselves and their ability to persevere. In the 2009 film, Precious, a young girl lives through torment as she grows up in section 8 housing with an abusive mother and father, but when she decides that she has had enough she breaks free to try to obtain the life she has always dreamed of. Precious can be understood within the context of Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls because Precious endures many similar life experiences as the women of For Colored Girls. Precious is a sixteen year old girl who lives with her mother and father in section 8 housing...
Words: 708 - Pages: 3
...Jim crow was the colloquialism the people used for the systems of laws and customs that separated the races in the south. Back then Jim crow laws basically separated the blacks and whites many laws were cruel. Jim crow laws hurt the colored people financially and educationally and in many other ways. How did the people make money if lots of colored people had the disadvantage to everything ?, For instance, In the text Jim Crow Laws on page 197 it states “no colored barber shall serve as a barber to white women or girls. This law was made in the state of Georgia this law means no man of color is allowed to cut a white women or girls hair. I think Georgia made this law because they think because the man is of color he is dangerous to the white...
Words: 338 - Pages: 2
...while they were experiencing it. Multicultural literature used in education would not only give people the opportunity of learning about a historical event from their cultures point of view, but they would also get the chance to learn about it from the personal experience that the authors from those cultures endured. Stories like The Lemon Orchard by Alex La Guma and Once Upon a Time by Nadine Gordimer gives the reader a more personal view of how their cultures endured during the historic Apartheid Movement. Other stories like Dead Men’s Path by Chinua Achebe and Or Else, the Lightning God by Catherine Lim gives readers an inside view of what other cultures experienced when the changing of the times came. Then there are stories like Good Girls Are Bad News by Subhadra Sen Gupta and One of the Beautiful Creatures by Navarre Scott Momaday gives readers a personal view of finding truth and being changed by it. Cultural and Racial Segregation The Lemon Orchard Alex La Guma, who lived in South Africa during the Apartheid Movement, used his experience with this historical event to write a story that shows the emotions felt by some of those...
Words: 1942 - Pages: 8
...Over one hundred and fifty years ago Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States and granted the slaves their freedom. Although this was a successful event, it did not end the racism against African Americans that still occurs even in today’s educational system. During the twentieth century public schools for white and colored children were segregated but “equal”. In 1954, the Supreme Court held one of the biggest cases known as Brown vs. The Board of Education. This case proved that segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court made one of the biggest decisions that became known in the twentieth century to remove the Separate But Equal law that...
Words: 1863 - Pages: 8
...Zora Neale Hurston recounts the day she began to feel colored in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Hurston does not recall feeling colored until after her thirteenth birthday because up until then she had lived in an “exclusively … colored town.” (1) Thus, surrounded by individuals coming from a similar culture background Hurston never felt different. However, Hurston began to feel colored once she moved schools to the white Jacksonville. Still though, Hurston does not feel too colored until she is “thrown against a sharp white background.” (3) When Hurston feels the most colored she experiences a sense of loneliness because she has no one of the same background to relate to at her current residence, unlike her previous home. However, sometimes feeling colored does not give her negative feedback, rather it empowers her. For instance, when Hurston visits a jazz club she revels in the music and feels as if her “face is painted red and yellow and her body is painted blue,” because she is “in the jungle and living the jungle way.” (3) After, when she looks around and realizes that her white friends did not experience the music as she did, Hurston is grateful to be colored. Because she has a greater appreciation for the rhythm and colors that her white friends cannot see....
Words: 447 - Pages: 2
...Racism is a reoccurring theme in southern novels. Whether the main protagonist is black or white, racism is represented in Ellen Foster, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and How to Kill a Mocking Bird. All three girls, Scout, Marguerite, and Ellen, are surrounded by racism. However, the girls do not seem to understand exactly why society is so offended by black people. This is a hard concept for little girls to understand. To begin with, Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster is about an eleven-year-old who lives with her alcoholic dad and sick mother. One day, Ellen discovers that her mother has overdosed on her medication, and her father does little to nothing to help. Due to her mother passing away, Ellen’s father abuses her physically and mentally....
Words: 1890 - Pages: 8
...speaker of this piece is a young man reminiscing of a secret tryst he had with a young girl. This is a provocative poem, told in the first person and is full of imagery, figurative language and symbolism. Actually it is about a class system of the past, racial prejudices, lust and empowerment. The setting of this poem is in a rural part of an unnamed Southern state, off of Highway 96 at Cherrylog Road. It is at the peak of a summer afternoon in a junkyard full of discarded automobiles. As a result, the setting affects the reader’s perception of this poem by using a hot southern junkyard with an active sun that is “eating the paint in blisters...
Words: 1454 - Pages: 6
...because of his “heritage” and how he would stand out as a black Spy. While his stand up comedy is fantastic, it does reveal a potential truth sprinkled in his humor. Throughout the franchise the amount of colored MI6 agents is seldom. I believe this is intentional by the writers of the films. There are considerable benefits for creating a Bond with the privileges of being a white man. From a production standpoint, having Bond check all the privilege boxes makes writing for him easier. It allows the writing to be less constricted and allows the writers room to breathe when creating a...
Words: 1674 - Pages: 7
...St. Paul University Quezon City Aurora Blvd. Corner Gilmore Avenue A Research Study on how does skin color affects child’s perception towards a person Submitted to: Ms. Amy Corado Submitted by: Bilano, Clareze Bonina, Mary Isabelle Bustamante,Clarenz CHAPTER I Introduction Most people assume that they see the same thing as other people, taking into account corrections for refractive errors with eyeglasses. However, there is now substantial evidence to suggest that this is not the case. Namely, we do not see exactly what others see. Racism is the belief that characteristics and abilities can be attributed to people simply on the basis of their race and that some racial groups are superior to others. Even though race and color clearly overlap, they are not synonymous. Thus, color discrimination can occur between persons of different races or ethnicities, or between persons of the same race or ethnicity. Racism and discrimination have been used as powerful weapons encouraging fear or hatred of others in times of conflict and war, and even during economic downturns. Racism is also a very touchy subject for some people, as issues concerning free speech and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights come into play. It may be a factor contributing to poor health and health care disparities in minority children through multiple mechanisms, including effects on psychological and physical well-being. Little is known about the experiences of racism that...
Words: 3578 - Pages: 15
...black and white people. The white people had the upper hand, because they had a way stronger financial background, which enabled them to employ black people to work for them. The black people were therefore undermined, and they worked as slaves. This problem is processed in the short story “The Journey to the Brothers’ Farm”, in which we are introduced to a girl named Annelie. She lives in South Africa, and has experienced terrible things, where she has experienced apartheid at first hand. The composition of the story is very interesting as it is build up in two parts. The part written in italic contains a statement received by the Tweekopfentein Police Station, and contains the things that are important to cover the police investigation and nothing more. The part written in normal typing contains a story of the whole course. It is a special way of building a short story, and it works very effectively, because you become aware of the fact that a criminal act has taken place. The first part of the story contains a description of her childhood. A lady named Miss Kotzee reads a story about a girl called Dulcina, a beautiful girl with white skin, flaxen hair of the purest silk, and fine bones. As she has read the story Annelie starts to wonder whether if she can obtain same fortune herself. She therefore asks Miss Kotzee if she can:“Do you think a prince would ever want to marry Bettina? […] her path in life” (Ll. 11-17)At this point, the reader starts to wonder what makes Annelie unable...
Words: 1765 - Pages: 8
...On Melba’s sixteenth birthday, she writes in her diary, “Please,God, let me learn how to stop being a warrior. Sometimes I just need to be a girl.”(Beals 217) Beals’ party isn’t a huge success; no one shows up, except for Vince, and he leaves earlier than expected. This really shows the impact that racism had on everyone. No one felt safe around Melba Beals; therefore, decided not to go to her party. Also no one ever invited her to their parties. She realizes that this was a never ending battle, and she will have to make herself tough to gain more courage and fight for her freedom. If this book is read by teenagers, especially girls, they will definitely feel the pain of Melba and they will make a connection to racism and how girls at that age were affected this...
Words: 956 - Pages: 4
