Movie review: 'For Colored Girls' by Tyler Perry

What is the meaning of the original title, "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf?"

The story is focused around 8 women who relate their lives through a series of poems. The first part of the title comes from the fact that not only are the women "colored" because they're African-American, but that each of the pain that they've been through is represented by a color. Because of their specific ordeals, each of them have viewed death or suicide as a way out of their situation. This comes to an end in the last scene in the play, where the women gather together for a "laying on of hands." They collectively realize that their strength, admist their flaws and differences, comes from something greater than themselves.

The second part of the title, "The Rainbow Is Enuf," symbolizes their unity, because they collectively are a rainbow. A rainbow is symbolic of God's covenant/promise with His people, and most importantly, rainbows only come after storms. Each of the women realize that it is through God's power that each of them have survived and they can now put their pain and past hurts behind them, and move forward. As the last lines in the play state: "I found God within myself, and I loved her fiercely. And this is for colored girls who have considered suicide, but are now moving to the ends of their own rainbows."

(retrieved from imdb)

One of the most touching scenes to me, after Yasmine's rape juxtaposed with the Opera singers performance was when she is sitting in the doctor's examination chair and being interviewed by the police officer who suggests She might have been suggestioning him w sexual advances of her own to her rapist...

Yasmine: A rapist doesn't have to be a stranger to be legitimate. Someone you never saw. A man with obvious problems. But if you been public with him, danced one dance, kissed him goodbye lightly with a closed mouth, pressing charges will be as hard as keeping your legs closed while five fools try and run a train on you. These men friends of ours, who smile nicely, take you out to dinner, then lock the door behind you...