Quick Hit: Salamishah Tillet on For Colored Girls

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University of Pennsylvania professor and A Long Walk Home founder Salamishah Tillet is none too happy about how Tyler Perry’s film interpretation of Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enough turned out. Tillet writes at The Root today:

“… we must remain hyper aware that Perry’s For Colored Girls does little to dispel the sexual stereotypes and victim blaming of black women in contemporary American politics and popular culture — especially of those women who have endured sexual assault, domestic violence, infertility and sexual transmitted infections. (Here, I should mention that Perry’s new homophobic plot twist — involving a closeted, bisexual, HIV-positive black man and his ostensibly emasculating wife — also works against the open and inclusive spirit of Shange’s brand of black feminism.)”

Read the rest of Tillet’s “A Feminist Analysis of Tyler Perry’s ‘For Colored Girls’” here, as well as Courtney Young’s analysis, entitled “Tyler Perry’s Gender Problem,” in The Nation.

Photo: Essence.com

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