For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf

Alexie’s imagery unravels the darkest secret from native people. “All white women love Indian men. That is always the case. White women feign disgust/at the savage in blue jeans and T-shirt, but secretly lust after him.” The continuous concept of patriarchy that has been carried throughout years make it difficult for even white women to escape their own gender because being a woman means you will be controlled by men and escaping the chains of patriarchy seems unrealistic thus, the cycle of this continues as the identity of the women fades because women are not seen as humans. She will be swept away with their “storms” of patriarchy and will eventually demolish the white woman 's life while the men commit murders and become alcoholics.“When the Indian man unbuttons his pants, the white women should think of the topsoil.” As the white women is ready to sexually engage in the Indian men she “forgets” she belongs to the whites who give greater pleasure simultaneously, becoming difficult for women to escape the ideology of men policing around women and using them like objects to fulfill their desires. The obscure meaning of topsoil points out the irony as the white people are on the topsoil as well as, superior. In the contrary, native women are at the surface where life is destroyed. However, the dirt reaching the top soil effortlessly illustrates the wrongs white men have done in the past and the

“For Colored Girls” is comprised of seven women who represented a different shade of the rainbow. The colors are brown, red, yellow, white, green, orange and blue. Their costumes and make-up transformed each of them and were symbolic of the color their character embodied. The ensemble acting made all of their roles of equal importance, without one dominating the other. These women together formed a bond through their various adversities, gradually taking them from strangers to acquaintances. From an objective view, the audience is allowed to simply observe the events as they take place (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2011, pg. 82) chronologically. Throughout the movie during some of the conflicting and traumatic scenes, one of the women recites a

One profound piece of African American literature is Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. This revolutionary work provides audiences with poems regarding the various aspects of life and challenges that are faced by black women, from the perspectives of black women. One poem in the text that demonstrates this viewpoint is the lady in yellow’s “Graduation Nite” poem. The feminine gaze utilized in this poem allows the woman to have agency over her body, and address the concerning ways in which women are socialized; however, this gaze is problematic in the way that is treats men. The female perspective is an essential part to the pieces of this text, it is also vital that these view points do no take on the same destructive behavior that this text is attempting to end.

Within “A Certain Lady” the main theme presented to the reader is that love can often be a one way road, ending in heartbreak and loss of emotion. Throughout the poem the speaker experiences many events within he life, between her and her husband, that help to exemplify the theme. The first example present to the reader is on line three. Her the speaker states, “And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,” showing the reader how she would dress up for her husband, despite never needing to. However, further ahead in the poem the speaker is met by the apparent lack of effort exerted from the husband, going so far as to rehearse and recite the list of things he has already stated he loves about her rather than being genuine. In line ten the speaker states, “That I am gay as morning, light as snow,” in regards to how she behaves for her husband. This quote shows that she maintains a perfect body image, as well as, a pleasant attitude in order to please her husband. Regardless of her efforts, the speaker is forced to listen to her husband talk about other women that he has come across in his travels rather than talk about her. This can be seen on lines fourteen and fifteen, “And you bring tales or fresh adventurings -- Of

“For Colored Girls” involves seven women who represents a different shade of the rainbow. The colors are brown, red, yellow, white, green, orange and blue. Their costumes and make-up transformed each of them and were significant of the color their character embodied. As a group their acting made all of their roles of equal importance, without one dominating the other. These women together formed a bond through their various adversities, gradually taking them from strangers to companion. From an objective view, the audience is allowed to simply observe the events as they take place chronologically. Throughout the movie during some of the conflicting and traumatic scenes, one of the women recites a poem to signify and release the emotion being felt at that time.

Characters, in Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky, force the protagonist, Rachel, to choose between her white and black side. They only acknowledge her black side while only celebrating her white qualities. Consequently, Rachel feels the obligation to accept the roles that have been thrust upon her and ignores part of her race because of the commentary from her family and peers. Rachel adapting to the portrayal of her racial identity to appeal to the normalized opinions of her appearance, demonstrates her tendency to comply with the categorization people of color face throughout society. Ultimately, leading Rachel to pick and choose the parts of her racial identity that most please the people she is with.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

The theme of Colored Girls is mainly Shange 's view of other women of her

Throughout all of history there has been an ideal beauty that most have tried to obtain. But what if that beauty was impossible to grasp because something was holding one back. There was nothing one could do to be ‘beautiful’. Growing up and being convinced that one was ugly, useless, and dirty. For Pecola Breedlove, this state of longing was reality. Blue eyes, blonde hair, and pale white skin was the definition of beauty. Pecola was a black girl with the dream to be beautiful. Toni Morrison takes the reader into the life of a young girl through Morrison’s exceptional novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel displays the battles that Pecola struggles with each and every day. Morrison takes the reader through the themes of whiteness and beauty,

SECTION I INTRODUCTION “Sister Citizen; Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America” is a non-fictional work published in 2011. A citizen by definition is being a resident of a city, town, state, and/or nation especially one entitled to vote and enjoy other privileges there. Women in the African American community are sometimes referred to as “sisters”.

Although written decades apart, Jacqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye both explore the trials and tribulations that young black girls must endure as they begin to step into womanhood. While the burdens that the protagonists in each of these texts differ in some key ways, one of the most interesting things that both Woodson and Morrison depicted was a sense of difficulty in coping with these changes, and rather than having any semblance of mastery over their circumstances, these young protagonists would instead project their emotions onto something else as they try to discover what causes their suffering.

It tells the story from the perspective of a young girl, who continuously gets scolded by her mother for going against social norms by writing. She continues to write despite the rebuke she receives from her mother because she hears the voices of the women who lived before her pleading her to continue writing. The girl explains that while most of her female family members experienced rape, they did not feel shame instead “They were singing, searching for meaning in the dust. And sometimes, they were talking to faces across the ages, faces like yours and mine.” (page 194). The reason these women did not feel shame was because they understood that while this act was horrible they needed to continue on with life in order to establish hope for the future generations that come after them. The reader gets to understand that life is cruel, but it is sometimes for the better. It also addresses this at the end of the epilogue when the girl’s mother has finished braiding her hair “..ask you to name each braid after those nine hundred and ninety-nine women who were boiling in your blood, and since you had written them down and memorized them, the name would come rolling off your tongue. And this was your testament to the way that these women lived and died and lived again.” (page 196) This shows the ultimate reward the people

Many Americans (like the women in Shange’s play) still feel oppressed by the racist and male-dominated society. “Bein Alive and bein a woman and bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma I have not conquered yet” (Shange 59). This quote expresses the reality of the majority of the population share in these struggles. While the lady in yellow in who said this quote is a woman of color and certainly carries her own challenges and burdens, there are basic struggles of being a human that she is also trying to comprehend. Although, I want to highlight specifically on how Shange addresses the struggles of the black woman. For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide gives a voice to the voiceless and articulated the realities of modern life form some black women. Shange presented the black woman in moments of weakness, sorrow, or shame honestly; and without apologies. Specifically, Shange established that women of color deserve to be heard and never stifled. She also sets a strong theme for her play that is

Within The Color Purple by Alice Walker, women are treated as inferior to men therefore they must obey them. Through the strength and wisdoms Celie gains from other women, she learns to overcome her oppression and realize her self worth as a woman. The women she has met throughout her life, and the woman she protected since young, are the people that helped her become a strong independent woman. Sofia and Shug were there for Celie when she needed someone to look up to and depend on. Nettie was able to push Celie to become a more educated, independent person. The main source of conflict in this book is Celie’s struggle with becoming an independent woman who needs not to rely on a man. Throughout the book we see her grow as a person and

“Playing with Rainbows” is a short story written by a Malaysian, Saroja Theavy Balakrishnan . “Playing with Rainbows” narrates the dreadful story of Sita, a factory worker who is originated from an estate in Kuala Kangsar. The story starts with Sita trying to commit suicide by jumping into severely polluted river. However, her attempts prove futile as Banu, her best friend, is preventing her from doing so with all her might. Sita depicts herself as a trash. Not only she loses her purity and dignity to a Pakistani man whom she barely knows, also she is stone-hearted enough to abandon her two month-old baby in a filthy drain. Eventually, Sita’s long-lost conscience comes back to her after a few necessary slaps by Banu. She decides to get back her baby and has an Indonesian construction worker to thank for her still alive baby.