'African American Essay\r'

'Created in 1975, For colourize Girls Who Have Considered suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf, focuses on the struggles of coloured wo workforce not moreover from that era, but issues gloss over pertaining to blackened women 35 years subsequent. Shange’s effective choreopoem is comprised of septet women trying to â€Å"sing a black girl’s song…. Sing a song of life, she’s been dead so unyielding”(Shange 18), creating a voice for e genuinely muliebrity. None of these women birth a realize, only a color, to show that they gift all women of color.\r\nShange includes themes of love, abandonment, sexuality, abortion, and domestic violence to emphasize what women in her community were and still atomic number 18 subjugated to. by dance, poetry, and music these women slowly but surely feel their true identity. Ntozake uses her work as a tool around to invest all â€Å" dark-skinned girls” by creating these sevensome strong women that form a bond when they are adequate to(p) to find their identity as black women, and essentially in their journey nonplus it to the hold back of their rainbows without committing suicide.\r\nWhen looking into Shange’s life on that point’s no question that situations, which she had observed day-to-day or drawd herself, were imposed on her writings. Born as Paulette Williams she was raised in a middle separate family, which was not a childishness common for blacks. Her family travel to St. Louis and she attended a non-segregated school where she had to endure glary racism at the mere age of eighter from Decatur years old. She rebelled against her family’s satisfaction with being a part of the middle class when she still had to assign with the hardships of being black and a woman.\r\nRealizing that in the material world on that point were limitations being set on blacks and women in society, produced her anger: the catalyst to her decision to issue to not only empower women, but to empower and teach early girls more or less social issues as well. Paulette showed that women could be undefeated when she entered Barnard College, but during this time her bliss that stemmed from her success turned into melancholy when her conserve left her and she attempted suicide many times.\r\nShe overcame this and let her voice come a make it through her works. Her experience shows why the theme that runs rampant throughout her writings is for black women to rely on themselves, and to not bequeath themselves to become dependent on a man, for this is the only way they will become whole and run into their true identity. The girls in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf, like Paulette all overcome their issues when their voice is no longer silenced, and do not commit suicide.\r\nWilliams later took the African name Ntozake Shange meaning, â€Å"she who brings her give birth things,” and â€Å"one wh o walks with lions. ” She explained to Allan Wallach in Newsday that it was necessary for her to embrace a new name because she felt she was â€Å" animateness a lie:” â€Å"[I was] living in a world that defied reality as most black people, or most etiolate people, understood it †in other words, feeling that there was something that I could do, and then realizing that nobody was expecting me to do anything because I was colored and I was overly female, which was not very easy to deal with”(qttd.\r\nin Wainwright). She did this to show that she was no longer Paulette Williams who society believed was a black woman who wasn’t suppose to amount to anything, and didn’t command other women to believe that black women being successful should be deemed unusual. In her essay, â€Å"is not gd to be born a girl”, she wants all women to hear that ”we pay for being born girls/ but we owe no one anything / not our labia, not our clitoris, not our lives.\r\nwe are born girls & live to be women who live our own lives/ to live our lives/ to have/ our lives/ to live”(Rothenberg 132). Her theme in this essay, that women will gain a self satisfaction only when they are able specify their own dreams without allowing society to hinder their part from becoming reality, is the same philosophy that is inside for colored girls, and seems to be what Ntozake Shange followed in her own life. The significance of Shange’s title for this choreopoem should not be overlooked.\r\nThe title’s rich meanings gives readers an insight on what the author’s views are, and also allows the reader to imagine their own accomplishable meanings. Shange uses the word â€Å"Colored” which calls attention to when it was once employ as a derogatory term employ by white oppressors. Although â€Å"Colored” was employ as a derogatory term, it was also used within the black culture to bring them together. For colored girls, was used in the title to specifically target young â€Å"colored girls.\r\n” In the beginning of the journey of the seven women they all sing, mum’s little bobble likes shortnin, shortnin, Mama’s little baby likes shortnin lettuce Mama’s little baby likes shortnin, shortnin, Mama’s little baby likes shortnin bread (Shange 20). From this childhood song to lady in yellow lecture about her â€Å"graduation nite” where she â€Å"was the only virgin in the crowd”(Shange 21), Shange used these poems to show her readers the journey from maidenhood to womanhood.\r\nShe wanted the dangers that black woman struggle to overcome, selective cultivation that most parents will withhold, to be heard by these young girls: The reason that For Colored Girls is entitled For Colored Girls is that’s who it was for…I want a cardinal year-old girl to reach out for and get information that isn’t just contraceptive i nformation but emotional information…if there is an audience for whom I write, it’s the little girls who are coming of age. I want them to know that they are not completely and that we adult women thought and continue to think about them (Hamilton 79-80).\r\nEven though Shange’s work is intend for children it is still considered inspirational for both women and girls. In adjunct to the word â€Å"colored” within the title, the image of the â€Å"rainbow” also holds important meanings. The rainbow symbolizes the emotional aspect, which Shange discusses. All these women go through emotional pains caused by either men or themselves, but at the end of their storm or distress they all eventually make it to the end of the rainbow that is â€Å"enuf” for them to go on without committing suicide.\r\nThe rainbow has a gentle form, and comes alive through the seven women that give a voice to all women. Even though there are statements from differen t women, Shange writes in such a way where you read each statement as a whole entity putting this rainbow of women together. The rainbow also refers to how whimsical each â€Å"colored girl” is, each having their own attributes that allow them to amount to something in society no matter what is believed by others.\r\n'