For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/ When the Rainbow is Enuf centralizes the essence, process and the work of healing both individually and collectivity. Shange affirms the acknowledgement of sensuality, the embodiment and the reclamation of sensuality. Sensuality that enables women of color to be expressive, to heal and to exist without limitation(s). In Audre Lorde’s essay “Uses of the Erotic” similar sentiments are expressed as well as the Spring 2014 production of an All Self-Identified Women of Color cast Vagina Monologues. These work of arts, though through different mediums speak about self-realization and self-actualization through performance art and healing through recognition of harmful acts that demands and encourages women of color self-deprecation. Recognition and expression of the sensual in service of oneself and other women who are engaged in collectivity work as lorde mentions”For women, this has meant a suppression of the erotic as a considered source of power and information within our lives” (53). Lorde acknowledges the detriments of suppressing the erotic, which I interpret as being the movement and the acknowledgement of one’s (women’s) ability and capability to love and care for themselves unconditionally and wholly.
