ABSTRACT
In terms of female sexuality generally and of the sexual possibilities of black women, particularly, perhaps no other writer has foregrounded Shange's work explicitly and imagistically in the public arena of the American stage as poet-playwright Ntozake Shange. As Shange has repeatedly acknowledged, her writings are offered to little girls coming of age who need more than birth control information for their complete emotional and psychological development. Shange's choreopoem for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf (1976) presents sexuality as one of the reasons colored girls might consider suicide. That a woman's sexuality is a liability is further demonstrated in the poignant poem, latent rapists where sexuality is a means of demonstrating manhood and power for men. Shange, through Sue Jean's murder of the child she conceives, illustrates the ultimate futility of sexual manipulation. It is also Shange's only play that deals however minimally with bisexuality and homosexuality.
