The subtitle of the collection is "the roots of your hair/what turns back when we sweat, run, make love, dance, get afraid, get happy: the tell-tale sign of living."

The salient themes of the various writings within nappy edges all can be tied back to the multifaceted existence and complicated identities of black women.

[3] In inquiry, Shange explains the importance that poems elicit a visceral reaction out of the reader in the same way that a kiss or cold water would.

She challenges the idea that words and poetry belong to men, and points to how unfair it is that when a woman does something, an 'ess' is added to the title (as in poetess).

[9] Shange uses her poems to push back against the way in which black women have been allowed a single, monolithic voice and experience.

[2] She claims that there is such a profound ignorance about the lives of black women, that they themselves struggle to fully understand themselves, thus creating identity confusion.

In keeping with her focus on the importance of cultivating a personal writerly voice, she uses language, spelling, grammar, and tone to emphasize her themes.

[12] Although nappy edges is not as widely read as for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf or some of Shange's other works, it was well received.

Roxanne Brown of the New Pittsburgh Courier called nappy edges "a richly-textiled tapestry of cheeriness and pain, woven together by a musical lyric of women's tears and girlish laughter.

(...) Shange's concerns remain inseparably political and personal, her music distinctive, her method of expression emotional and tempered with enough objectivity to avoid rhetoric.