The book tells stories of real people coming of age, coming out, dealing with religion and spirituality, seeking love and relationships, finding their own identity in or out of the LGBT community, and creating their own sense of political empowerment. For Colored Boys, addresses longstanding issues of sexual abuse, suicide, HIV/AIDS, racism, and homophobia in the African American and Latino communities, and more specifically among young gay men of color. While the film was selling out movie theaters, young black gay men were literally committing suicide in the silence of their own communities. The book would go on to inspire legions of women for decades and would later become the subject and title of a hugely popular movie in the fall of 2010. In 1974, playwright Ntozake Shange published For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf.
