for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf

From its inception in California in 1974 to its highly acclaimed critical success at Joseph Papp's Public Theater & on Broadway, the Obie Award-winning for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf has excited, inspired & transformed audiences all over the country.

Passionate & fearless, Shange's words reveal what it is to be of color & female in the 20th century. First published in 1975 when it was praised by The New Yorker for "encompassing...every feeling & experience a woman has ever had," for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf will be read & performed for generations to come.

Here is the complete text, with stage directions, of a groundbreaking dramatic prose poem written in vividly powerful language that resonates with unusual beauty in its fierce message to the world.