Contemporary African American Female Playwrights: An Annotated Bibliography by Dana A. Williams (review)

Book Reviews DANA A. WILLlAMS. Contemporary African American Female Playwrights: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Cf: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. 124. $55·00. Williams's annotated bibliography highlights the work of sixty-three playwrights from 1959 to early 1997. This is the first bibliography to focus exclusively on contemporary African-American women playwrights. Not since the publication of Bernard Peterson's Contempora/Y Black American Playwrights and Their Plays (1988) has there been such a valuable resource in this field. Williams's introduction provides insight into the marginalization of African -American women in publication. production and criticism by mainstream American theatre and male-dominated African-American theatres. She cites Black Drama Anthology, edited by Woodie King, Jr., and Ron Milner, as an example. In Black Drama Anthology of the twenty-three dramas anthologized only two are by women. Williams also notes that productions by AfricanAmerican women are often viewed as challenging the interests of the financially dominant culture, the white patriarchy. Williams usefully divides the collection into three categories. Part One details selected anthologies that include one or more plays by contemporary African-American women. Part Two offers a comprehensive listing of general criticism and reference works and provides a list of dramatists who have had at least one play published since 1959. The entry includes a brief synopsis of the play. The entries also catalogue primary and secondary sources on the playwrights. An appendix lists periodicals and journals that frequently publish articles on African-American female playwrights and their plays. A second appendix includes brief biographical data on the writers. Williams also provides an author index, a title index and a very useful subject index. Modem Drama, 41 (1998) 483 BOOK REVIEWS A shortcoming in Williams's bibliography is her neglect of material in certain major sources such as Black Masks and American Theatre, a puzzling oversight, especially because she lists these journals in her appendix. Both journals have highlighted works by such playwrights as Cheryl West, Anna Deavere Smith, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrienne Kennedy and Regina Taylor. American Theatre has published plays by both Cleage and Parks. I was also disappointed by the omission of published works by such writers as West and Taylor. West's Before it Hits Home (1993 and 1996) and Jar the Floor (1992) are missing from the list, as are Taylor's Watermelon Rinds and In the Belly of the Beast (both 1995). Another exciting playwright, Shay Youngblood, who published two works prior to 1997 through Dramatists Publishers , Shaking the Mess Out of Misery and Talking Bones, is also absent from the collection. While most of the play descriptions are good, some are rather vague and warrant a stronger sense of content. For Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, of all the plays, Williams provides only a brief sentence. For Alice Childress's Wine in the Wilderness, Williams describes the character Tommy as a "streelwoman ," which is a rather misleading label for this admirdble chardcter. Perhaps the tenn "working-class woman" would have been more appropriate. Tommy is the spiritual catalyst and heroine in the play. Nevertheless, Contemporary African American Female Playwrights is an invaluable addition to the annals of theatre history resources. Despite the shortcomings, Williams has made a major contribution that will prove valuable to theatre scholars and those interested in African American women playwrights . Dana Williams, currently a PhD student, clearly has a bright future as a theatre scholar. KATHY A. PERKINS, UN IVERSITY OF ILLINOIS (URBANA) EDWARD L. SHAUGHNESSY. Down the Nights and Down rhe Days: Eugene O'Neill's Catholic Sensibility. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press 1996. Pp. 226. $28.95. The title of this book is a line from "The Hound of Heaven," Francis Thompson 's "profoundly Catholic poem" (30) often recited to friends by the young Eugene O'Neill in his cups, and taken by the author of this study as emblematic of an abiding Catholic sensibility in the apostate playwright. This might seem a bit stretched on Shaughnessy's part, leading one to expect the book to strive chauvinistically to establish O'Neill 's Catholicism as central to all he wrote. But Shaughnessy avoids that. In fact, one of his strong points...