The family is based in Charleston, South Carolina, and their trade is to spin, weave, and dye cloth; unsurprisingly, this tactile creativity informs the lives of the main characters as well as the style of the writing.

[3] As is common in Shange's work, the narrative is peppered with interludes that come in the form of letters, recipes, dream stories and journal entries, which provide a more intimate approach to each woman's journey toward self-realization and fulfillment.

Before the reader learns much about the other sisters or mother, Indigo begins menstruating, is gifted an old fiddle by Uncle John, and consequently initiated into a cult-like group of pre-adolescent boys called the Jr. Geechee Captains.

Sassafrass exists on the periphery of Cypress' bright and full world for some time, planning to dance and write in hopes of regaining herself outside of Mitch's abuse.

During that same summer, Cypress joins a dance company that raises money to support the Civil Rights Movement and Leroy asks to marry her before she starts on her first tour with the group.

To shake the bad spirit of her man, Sassafrass performs a sort of exorcist as the deity Oshun came into her body and she decides to return home to the South, without Mitch.

[6] Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo borrows from these traditions and reflects an emphasis on the role of women in a society’s functioning, particularly through the sharing of recipes and ways of taking care of oneself and others.

[9] While these influences inform the content of the novel, they are also reflected in Shange’s prose and structural choices, demanding a new kind of reading from her audiences[10] In The Boston Phoenix, Carolyn Clay wrote that "Shange has filled this fragmented, magical book with (as one of her own colored girls might put it) 'alla her stuff': poetry and pain, music and dancing, life in the fast lane that runs between California and New York, mystical powers passed down from the Geechees, letters from home, recipes permeated with the flavor of the South.