I've been meaning to give credit to the longish title of the 1975 play for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf for being the inspiration for the title that I wanted to use for this thread. That title, which was mentioned in my first post to this thread, is Why I Think Being An Active Poster On Mudcat Is Emotionally Difficult for Me And May Also Be Emotionally Difficult For Other Black People And Other People Of Color Who Have Publicly Acknowledged Their Racial And/Or Ethnic Identity At One Time Or More Than One Time While Posting On This Forum. I didn't set out to pattern the title for this thread after the title of that play. It just happened. But I let it happen because from the onset I wanted there to be some element of appropriate lightheartedness in my approach {and I was hoping} others' approach to this very serious subject. And there have been some lighthearted moments in this discussion, though it's to be expected that the more serious comments would outnumber the lighthearted {should I say "witty"?} ones.

Since I've introduced that play, let me take this opportunity to provide some information about it:

"for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf" is an Obie winning play which was written by the African American female playwright Ntozake Shange. here is the wikepedia article about that play. Here's an excerpt of that article:

"Structurally, For Colored Girls is a series of twenty poems — referred to as a "choreopoem" — performed through a cast of nameless women, each known only by a color: Lady in Yellow, Lady in Purple, and so forth. The poems deal with love, abandonment, rape, and abortion. The performances of the nine actresses are equally focused on their specific stories; e.g., Lady in Blue's visceral account of a woman who chooses to abort her baby; Lady in Red's horrifying tale of domestic abuse. The performances are sharp and bone-chilling. Shange's own name means "she who walks like a lion" in isiXhosa, and her writing doesn't pull any punches when it comes to these hard-hitting issues. Her dealings with the hardships of physical and emotional abuse, the strength of unity, and the tragedy of loss have a focus and passion that has made the play and its incarnations last a generation".

-snip-

Also, here's an excerpt of that play from another online source, http://www.enotes.com/for-colored :

"for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf is a choreopoem, a poem (really a series of 20 separate poems) choreographed to music. Although a printed text cannot convey the full impact of a performance of for colored girls..., Shange's stage directions provide a sense of the interrelationships among the performers and of their gestures and dance movements.

The play begins and ends with the lady in brown. The other six performers represent the colors of the rainbow: the ladies in red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The various repercussions of "bein alive & bein a woman & bein colored is a metaphysical dilemma" are explored through the words, gestures, dance, and music of the seven ladies, who improvise as they shift in and out of different roles. In the 1970s, when Ntozake Shange herself performed in for colored girls..., she continually revised and refined the poems and the movements in her search to express a female black identity. Improvisation is central to her celebration of the uniqueness of the black female body and language, and it participates in the play's theme of movement as a means to combat the stasis of the subjugation. In studying this play in its textual, static format one should, therefore, keep in mind the improvisational character of actual performance and realize that stasis is the opposite of what Shange wanted for this play. In fact, in her preface she announces to readers that while they listen, she herself is already "on the other side of the rainbow" with "other work to do." She has moved on, as she expects her readers to do as well".