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Female Aesthetics in Ntozake Shange's for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2013, 26(3), pp.221-241
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama

Joo, Kee Wha 1

1건국대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes formal problems that the critics pose in for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf, one of Ntozake Shange’s works in the 1970s, with Hélène Cixous’s “écriture féminine” and “female forms” of Helene Keyssar and Sue-Ellen Case. for colored girls has been very popular among people. At the same time, however, it has been severely criticized, apparently because it has neither causality nor time order, while traditional plays have one or two narratives developed by causalities spreaded on both temporal and spatial dimensions, and show introduction, development, turn and conclusion, or shakespearean climax and denouement. There are several protagonists in for colored girls, who neither seem to be associated with each other, nor connected by a single narrative. The focus of the story shifts very quickly among the characters while several collage-style stories are arranged. Even though there are some events, they will only form small plots in each story separately. As a whole, the work has neither narrative nor plot, except for a collage of several stories, which makes its form misunderstood as structural problem. However, this unique form can be understood as a “female forms” and “female aesthetics” embodied in the text by the characteristic female body and femininity cannot be approached by the existing perspectives.

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