for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf does not follow a narrative trajectory in its portraits of Black women and girls. Together, the poems create a picture of change in women from different walks of life coming together. One of those changes is coming of age.

Shange uses the word “girls” in the title for colored girls, immediately evoking childhood. Throughout the choreopoem, Shange’s poems depict girls becoming women and grappling with all that they lose, gain, and become as a result of that sometimes-tumultuous journey. Shange, via the speaker, invites stories of Black girlhood from the beginning. The speaker in “dark phrases” begs,

somebody/ anybody

sing a black girl’s song

bring her out

to know herself (4).

The first few lines, “dark phrases of womanhood/ / of never havin been a girl,” leave it open to interpretation if these girls experience loss of innocence. These lines expand the circle of girlhood to include women who might need to reclaim the innocence that the harshness of life never allowed them to have. Shange further establishes the choreopoem’s early pieces as a representation of girlhood in the transition between the first two poems. The women sing the childhood rhymes “mama’s little baby likes shortnin, shortnin” and “little sally walker, sittin in a saucer” (6).