Summary Of For Colored Girls By Ntozake Shange

There have been some comments about how Ntozake Shange has unfairly demonized black men through her choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf.” Such as saying that the work is portraying black men as "Satan's gift to black women." Though out this choreopoem there are definitely some serious situations between the female and the male where the male is what you might call the “bad guy”. While this happens, Shange addresses these conflicts without making an assumption or stereotype of all black men.
Each female character is able to tell their personal stories without even considering labeling black men all together as bad but instead they are trying to convey the situation that they were in, how they felt,
She includes Beau Willie Brown in “a nite with beau willie brown” who is eventually looked at as a bad guy overall but he is suffering from PTSD and since he is a veteran from Iraq he has been treated as insignificant because of his race, his illiteracy, and his psychological problems from the war. In order to numb his pain, he becomes a drug addict and abuses his girlfriend, Crystal. So even though he does all of these horrible things Shange is still able to give the readers a reason and allow them to have maybe just the slightest bit of understanding and an emotional connection with. Shange does the same with the character
He is so in denial and secret about his sexuality that he hates himself for it and when the lady in yellow confronts DJ about his sexuality he gets extremely angry and starts beating her and then leaves her. Shange points the blame on concepts that are even bigger than just the problems of each character. For example, with DJ and Beau Willie Brown Shange questions the world and situations that the men have been in that make them the way they are. Touching on the subject of how men are supposed to be after the war (hard core, stronger, emotionally detached) or heterosexual in the case of DJ.
Shange also questions the social norms of the world regarding a woman’s self-worth. In some of the stories of woman who attract men such as “one” the woman make themselves attractive so that they will attract men as if they were objects and instead of criticizing the men with comments such as being “thirsty” she questions why the woman even need such attention or why isn’t their self-love enough? Or is it even