[In For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,] Ntozake Shange sets out to evoke the plight of black women and at the same time somehow to celebrate them and their triumphs in life through a series of monologues, usually taken straight by one of the seven players, sometimes illustrated by one while another speaks. She sees herself very much as a poet, and that may well be the case. But she is farthest from proving it when she most desperately strains to do so. Which, unfortunately, is often in the most prominent parts of the show, like the opening and closing numbers of the two parts.
In these, and every now and then elsewhere, she tends to fall into a loose, dithyrambic style that Dylan Thomas would have recognised. The words twist and turn in an anguish of frustrated communication, and it all sounds as phoney as hell. And yet when she relaxes a bit, comes down from her literary high horse and lets experience speak for itself, the result can be funny and touching and, yes, in its spare vividness actually poetic. Poetry, after all, comes from a fundamental poetic vision, not from trying to be a poet. (p. 16)
This is a free excerpt of 205 words. There are 414 words (approx.
1 page at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Shange, Ntozake 1948–: Critical Essay by John Russell Taylor Access Pass.
