SOURCE: "Distraught at Laughter: Monologue in Shange's Theatre Pieces," in Feminine Focus: New Women Playwrights, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp. 210-225.

In the following essay, Geis discusses Shange's use of language as an expression of African American women's experience in her performance pieces.

… bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma/ i havent conquered yet/ do you see the point my spirit is too ancient to understand the separation of soul & gender/ my love is too delicate to have thrown back on my face

—Ntoazke Shange, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf

Ntozake Shange's works defy generic classifications: just as her poems (published in Nappy Edges and A Daughter's Geography) are also performance pieces, her works for the theater defy the boundaries of drama and merge into the region of poetry. Her most famous work, for colored girls who have...