I am a colored girl. I would be deceiving you if I said I wasn’t, I would be a fool if I said I was anything but a colored girl. It’s funny how we keep dancing around the political correctness of our society, we keep on tripping over the right word and we never get to the real words, the truth of what we are trying to say. Colored, black, African-American—I don’t even want to think of what’s next. People just need to speak and sometimes not worry about the feelings part or the aftermath if what comes out really is the truth. Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls does that. It just speaks the truth. It speaks the truth about colored girls but, everyone can see something in this film that they can understand.

You don’t have to be colored to see this movie. Based on Ntozake Shange’s play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (yes, “Enuf” is spelled just like that in the original title), the movie weaves in and out of the lives of 10 very different women. Nyla, the young girl, naïve and college bound; Tangie, promiscuous single youth rebelling against her old life and society; Gilda, the matron-like land lady; Crystal, the abused mother; Yasmine, a passionate dance teacher; Kelly, the social worker trying to change the world; Alice, the devout religious mother wrapped up in her faith; Juanita, the pushy clinical worker in and out of a bad relationship; Jo, classic type A magazine executive with her biggest enemy being herself; and, lastly, Rose who has been beaten up and spit out by the world for better and for worse.

I kept finding pieces of myself in this film. Things I have felt or thought about. Things about the future that scare me. Things I have never said out loud, and in this film they were said for me. If your experience is similar to mine, Colored Girls will find a way into your mind, perhaps help you rediscover ideas you have put aside. This film can also help you see something new, or look at something from the past in a whole new way.

Films have the power to hurt. They can hit us in places that even a bully can’t get to. Why would anyone pay to have an artistic medium, one that is supposed to take us away from our worries, deliver hurtful messages? Because a film like Colored Girls, in the skillful hands of a director like Tyler Perry, can also give us hope, even when we are faced with life’s sorrows. As we get older, we understand that life goes on and we can survive, even thrive. Perry makes us stop and see that in this film. It’s something that gets an eternal thank you from me.

This film is brave. It’s proof that there are more stories out there that need to be told. We need to be strong, take a deep breath and look into the stories that don’t always make us laugh. Stories that make us think about the future, and force us to remember the past. As it was. Not how we choose to remember it. For Colored Girls makes us think about issues that aren’t always said, often whispered about, but never spoken. The title says For Colored Girls, but this film’s timeless message is for everyone.

There is a poetic rhythm to the film’s language, thanks to the talented playwright Ntozake Shange. “Being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven’t conquered yet” and “I’ve got sorry knocking on my front door” or “He was about to walk off with all my stuff.” Only a few of the many lyrical delights of the film.

As I said. I am a colored girl, I saw this film because it’s about black women in society. It told the story of some of the aspects of black women in a beautiful and honest way. It raised questions that I liked, some I didn’t like and some that I sometimes feel not many people care about. This film is moving, passionate, and it says things that you don’t often hear. If you want to be moved, in ways that you are ready for, in ways you aren’t ready for, if you want to see or learn something new, take a risk. See this film.