Deconstructing gender narratives of abuse in Shange’s for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf

Abstract

In for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, Ntozake Shange deconstructs patriarchal ideology through language by sharing the experiences of empowerment and disempowerment of seven women that belong to the black community in the 1970s. She employs an innovative genre, the “choreopoem” which combines poetry, prose and stage performance. This paper is highly vested in gender politics as the stories of these seven women revolve around feminism. The play brings to the forefront the racial tensions that black women faced outside the black community but most importantly, it unravels the forces of subjugation that they experienced from within the very black community they are part of, through the violent behavior of black men towards their body. Issues such as rape, abortion, assuming non-normative roles are explored. Attentive to the multiplicity of voices, Shange yearns for the decolonization of black women from the double oppression they experience outside and within the black community by attaining agency through language and through projecting their voice..