This play is about a young black woman who is so lost in the myths of the black and white race that she feels vulnerable and without any identity. She cites Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee and her time at the Circle in the Square theatre as major influences of her work. In 1962 she joined Edward Albee's Playwrights' Workshop beginning over a thirty year career in theatre which continues to this day. Kennedy has been a lecturer at Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, and has taught playwrighting at Princeton and Brown. She has received Guggenheim Fellowships, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation Grants, and in 1992, the mayor of Cleveland declared March 7 to be Adrienne Kennedy
Racism is one of the key factors that play a major role in the play “Clybourne Park”. During act 1 the author shows racial tension in many ways. In the beginning, the play opens up based in Chicago in the 50’s and 60’s with Russ and Bev selling their house because they are in need of a new start. Karl then comes over and begins to question them if they know who bought the house. While doing this the author then informs the audience that the family that has bought the house is a black family.
The Raven Theatre Company presented Radio Golf, by August Wilson, which was performed at the Raven Theatre and was directed by Aaron Todd Douglas. Radio Golf was the last play that August Wilson wrote before he died in 2005 caused by liver cancer. This play won the 2007 New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. The playwright, August Wilson was trying to demonstrate how life was still tough in the 1990’s for African American people. He intended to show how being black affected the role in being a politician, but at the same time he showed the devotion that African American people had in doing what they dreamt to do.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a Sin To take the life of something or someone harmless is not only a sin, it’s a crime. Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, was published in 1960, at the very height of a national civil rights crisis in the United States, as a political statement, so that she could share her experiences and perhaps help us to “walk in another man’s shoes“ before judging him. Nelle Harper Lee was born in 1926, a time of racial segregation and inequality. As a child she slowly began to notice the subtle separations between herself and the hired help. The fact that they had an existence much like hers, but totally their own was a puzzle to her.
‘Everyday Use’ is almost an historical novel, based upon Dee’s family history. It is very much about African identity and Dee’s reaction to this having leaving home and moving to university. On one side there is the history of her immediate family, having lived through the civil war. However there is also the history of the culture and community in which her family belong to, dating back hundreds of years to the time of African slavery and oppression. Choosing to end the novel with ‘1973’ also indicates that Alice Walkers wants the reader to place the texts historically, after the years of the apartheid in America, when segregation was law.
At the time that Abel wrote the poem, American racism and lynching African American was present in the South, and all the other regions in the USA. Abel was really touched by all the violence, especially after seeing a photograph of the 1930 lynching ofThomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Usually he wouldask others to put his poems into songs. But after seeing the photograph he set the poem into a song himself this time. Hiswife, the black vocalist Laura Duncan first, and him perform it at Madison Square Garden.Then the song was introduced to Billie Holiday who first performed it at Café Society in 1939.
The experiences of the characters are based on years of history that African Americans have endured in America since the age of slavery. The painting titled, “Piano Lesson”, was Wilson’s primary source of inspiration. The painting was by Romare Bearden and the play is set in Pittsburgh in the year of 1936. The heritage that slavery has left behind is an open sore in the hearts of many African Americans and Wilson’s primary goal was to express this anguish within his writing. He was able to display the relationships that families of that era adorned on society during the Great Depression.
in History, but the passing of one of her biggest inspirations, her grandmother Louvenia Watson, caused her great suffering. This tragedy led to the production of powerful poems and essays, which essentially became her most significant outlet and by 1968, Giovanni published the first volume of her book of poems, Black Feeling Black Talk. This volume includes the poem Nikki-Rosa, one that gives a first hand account of the life of a young African American girl growing up in the heat of racism and violence. Immediately, the title Nikki-Rosa indicates that the poem will discuss Giovanni’s childhood, seeing as how the poem is given the title of the nickname Giovanni was given in the early years of her adolescence. In addition, the first shift directly comments on an area known as “Woodlawn,” (line 3) a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio where Giovanni briefly resided.
“Two Trains Running” I’ve chosen to write my paper on August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running.” I saw the play at the Geva Theater in Rochester, New York with a friend of mine who is from Liberia. My friend was writing a paper on the early experiences of African Americans in the United States and wanted to get a sense of their lives and struggles. She had already seen a production of “Fences” at a local school and decided to see “Two Trains Running.” when it came to Geva as part of the theater’s five year commitment to run Wilson’s ten plays from his “cycle of plays.” I agreed to accompany my friend because I read Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” several years ago and I enjoyed it very much. Catching a production of “Two Trains Running” would not only allow me to enjoy another of his works, but experience it first-hand as well. August Wilson, born Frederick August Kittle, grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh to a white father and a black mother (Kiffer, 2009, April 9).
| Comparison Essay | Brandon Simmons | October 10, 2012 | The purpose of this essay is to compare “The Library Card” written by Richard Wright and “Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” written by Alice Walker. These essays were written by two African American authors. Wright was born in 1908 and Walker was born in 1944. They grew up in the south during the times when America was segregated and African Americans were not free to do whatever they wanted to. Many of their stories were written about the struggles of blacks.