Reviews for House of women

The average rating for House of women based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-23 00:00:00 Thomas Pinto [EDITED TO CLARIFY A FEW THINGS] I thoroughly understand poetic license and the art of using vernacular in literature. Langston Hughes has taught me well. ;-) February, 2011 This book is not a novel. It is a choreopoem of fictional stories told by characters who all represent a color worn, i.e. Lady in Red, Lady in Yellow, Lady in Purple, etc. The title alone being the first clue, this is also not a timeless piece. I'll just get right to why I give this book one star. I despise intentional misspellings of words. It is one of my more severe pet peeves. I never wanted to read this book in the past because seeing the word "enough" spelled "enuf" irked me tremendously. Throughout the book, all of the poems are told in broken English (because that's obviously the only way to hear a black voice in literature) and lots of words are either misspelled or not spelled at all, for example, "could" is spelled "cd." There is an art to capturing the true voice of a character; and if that character is "ill-spoken," then there is a way to transfer that voice and still have it flow nicely as words on a page. I didn't like the way it was done in this piece; however there are many [BLACK] authors who have mastered this technique and have done so beautifully and provocatively -- and not just for the sake of showing a character's inability otherwise. I don't like the word "colored" to describe a person. I don't respect the idea of taking an oppressive word and capitalizing off of it; and capitalizing off of the grief that accompanies the word's connotation. Apparently, there are only a few stories to tell about "colored girls" and, given the collections of books available to the masses that are along the same order; those stories are all disgusting and sad. These colored girls are tormented souls and maybe they're so tormented because they refer to and see themselves as "colored," because honestly, I must profess that being a black woman is really not that big of a deal. In fact, I quite enjoy it and don't see my skin color as a direct attachment to all things sorrowful, painful, diseased, abused, and oppressed. The book's title says "For Colored Girls," but perhaps, this book is not for me. I am not saying my personal life has been all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, but how many people of ANY shade can say that about their own lives? "But this is real." I know, I know... and my response to that is this: Women, if this is what you're constantly attaching yourselves to, then you allow it to become your stigma, thus YOUR reality. Women... WOMEN go through this, NOT just "colored" women. There are so many women who will read these poems and relate to everything except the skin tone. So why is it that some authors have chosen to make universal experiences exclusive to one race and one sex? "Sing a black girl's song!" Let's keep our sorrow alive and let the world cry with us. And then what? We hope that "colored girls" who are actually not children, but grown women, will make better decisions in life? Will they go to college, use birth control and condoms, and stop dating guys named "Beaux Willie?" People really don't care about this being "real." They read it, say "ooh that's so sad" and go on sipping their lattes, while we stay and fight the preconceived stigmas... the same stories told in various forms of mass media over and over again until one image is indelibly printed in the minds of the masses. In addition to the aforementioned, main foibles, many of the characters needed to take responsibility for their own poor choices in the scenarios, yet they failed to do so in their own deliveries. For example, the characters Beaux Willie and Crystal, Crystal tells the story. She had been with Beaux Willie since she was thirteen years old. He went away to war and returned crazy and abusive. He was also jobless. Together, they had two children and she worked to support him and her children. At some point, Beaux Willie decided he wanted to marry Crystal, who suddenly realized that she shouldn't marry him. He was no longer good enough. She told him this while calling him all kinds of names including the N-word. So... he took her children and dangled them out of an open window five stories high. He asked her if she loved him and if so, will she marry him? And Crystal whispered a response... Listen... [Anyone with the smallest dose of common sense knows that you should always go along with crazy people. Tell them whatever they want to hear until they calm down and step out of their moment of craziness]. Well, Beaux Willie didn't like whatever she whispered and in response, he dropped the kids out of the window. He murdered their children. And this is what everyone is calling realistic? Can it happen? Yeah, I'm sure it can, but I don't know a black woman on this planet who would have allowed that to happen without a knife being jabbed deep into Beaux Willie's back. The children wouldn't have been the only ones murdered that day. I am also disgusted by the people on the street who stood there and watched the children dangling from the window. No one thought to run into their own house and grab a mattress or something huge and soft for the kids to land on? Or no one thought to gather around underneath where they were hanging, to at least try to catch them? This could have prevented their death and maybe they would have only ended up with twisted ankles or a broken arm. And so these are the reasons why I do not love this piece. When a fictional story contains extreme, unbelievable, preventive stupidity, I am impatient and completely unsympathetic towards the characters. I am not bribed into feeling emotionally attached simply because I am massivley told that I should be, since I am "of color."

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-08 00:00:00 Matthew Jones If there is ever a time in the future when people are able to gather together in groups again, I want to see a performance of For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. It is beautiful, passionate, real, gritty, lyrical. I felt like I was reading a song.  It's a poem performed by 7 women, each one of them representing a colour of the rainbow, and one the colour brown. They speak of their experiences as Black women, their dreams and their sorrows. Of abortion and AIDS and abandonment. Of rape and racism. Of longing and love, racism and violence. It is written in the women's vernacular which adds a rich and authentic element to the poem. I won't claim to have "gotten" all the layers of meaning, but I will claim that I enjoyed it very much. And maybe I can't see the performance right now, but I'm glad I could at least read the book.