Maya Angelou's poem "Phenomenal Woman" in the collection Chicken Soup for a Woman's Soul celebrates the spiritual and physical aspects of black female identity,

Nikki Giovanni's poem "Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)" (1970) in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, edited by Richard Ellman and Robert O'CIair, is another celebration of black female identity.

A book of seven poems describing seven "common" women in The Common Woman by Judy Grahn (1970) served as a model for Shange's/or colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Mary Daly's polemical text, Gyn/Econlogy: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism, Beacon, 1978 (Boston), underlies Shange's form of feminism, in which she attempts to redefine femaleness through creation of a new, more affirming, language.

The chapter called "Beauty and Ethnicity" in Robin Lakoffs work Face Value: The Politics of Beauty, Routledge...