Reading Contemporary African American Drama

The Editors: Trudier Harris is J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her Ph.D. in African American literature and folklore from The Ohio State University. Author and editor of more than twenty volumes, she is currently working on a book about African American writers and the South.Jennifer Larson is concentrating on the works of Suzan-Lori Parks in her graduate studies in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She serves as the Coordinator of the Connected Learning Program at UNC’s James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence.

• Contents: Trudier Harris: Introduction: Cracking the Mirror of History: Or, Shaping Identity in African American Drama – Rachelle S. Gold: «Education has spoiled many a good plow hand»: How Beneatha’s Knowledge Functions in A Raisin in the Sun – Matthew Luter: Dutchman’s Signifyin(g) Subway: How Amiri Baraka Takes Ralph Ellison Underground – Meredith M. Malburne: No Blues for Mister Henry: Locating Richard’s Revolution – Joy E. Cranshaw: African Queens and Messed-Up Chicks: Representations of Identity in Alice Childress’s Wine in the Wilderness – Pamela Hamilton: Child’s play: Ntozake Shange’s Audience of Colored Girls – Benjamin Sammons: Flyin’ «Anyplace Else»: (Dis)Engaging Traumatic Memory in Three Plays by Pearl Cleage – John M. Hannah: «A World Made in My Image»: Romare Bearden’s Collagist Technique in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone – John M. Hannah: Signifying Raisin: Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun and Wilson’s Fences – Jennifer Larson: Folding and Unfolding History: Identity Fabrication in Suzan-Lori Park’s Topdog/Underdog – Jennifer Larson: «With Deliberate Calculation»: Money, Sex, and the Black Playwright in Suzan-Lori Park’s Venus.

«‘Reading Contemporary African American Drama’ is a much needed volume that makes a major contribution to black identity formation studies. Playwright and novelist Alice Childress devoted her life to debunking stereotypes – misrepresentations – about blacks inside and outside of the American theater. It is only fitting that quintessential scholar/teacher Trudier Harris, who wrote one of the first comprehensive studies on Childress’s plays and novels, should shepherd a volume that includes cutting-edge research on Childress and other black dramatists who have carved out a place for truth on the American stage. The essays in this volume explore the many ways in which contemporary dramatists reformulate black identity by interrogating historically racist praxis. What these essays have in common is an exploration of history wherein characters move forward toward self-discovery, self-definition, and self-fulfillment in plays by blacks since the 1950s.» (Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, University of Houston; Editor of ‘Middle Passage and the Healing Place of History: Migration and Identity in Black Women’s Literature’)«‘Reading Contemporary African American Drama’ is an important reminder that history has never been a closed book for African American dramatists. By rejecting the long and troubling record of silent, biased, and inaccurate accounts of the African American past, dramatists from William Wells Brown and W.E.B. Du Bois to August Wilson and Suzan-Lori Parks have been able to rewrite history with an eye toward deconstructing old myths, giving voice to the nameless masses, and re-inserting the African American presence into the white space. The common bond that holds together this continuum of African American dramatists is the knowledge that history provides – for both writers and the characters – what August Wilson’s characters who suffer from historical amnesia call a ‘starting place.’ This book on the role of history throughout the canon of African American drama is an extremely valuable ‘starting place’ for increased scholarship on the works of African American dramatists.» (Sandra G. Shannon, Professor, Department of English, Howard University)