SISTER ACT
Reviewed by Erin Aubry Kaplan

Ntozake Shangeis is best known for “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbowis Enuf,”a play/poem that radically reshaped the black female narrative by stripping away the armor of popular images and examining the individual pain and uncertainty underneath. Her genius was wedding the economy of poetry to the expansive, sometimes explosive emotions and personal histories of characters who had never really been heard before—the theatrical equivalent of a jazz suite. Shange’s serious mission was leavened with plenty of humor and a sense of irony that rendered the nameless ladies in orange and other colors of the rainbow both tragic and triumphantly iconic, a balancing act of the personal and political that has distinguished many of her other works, including the novel Liliane.

To read the full review, check out the latest issue of Ms. on newsstands today!