From 1727 Bedford Street to 1839 Wylie Avenue: Home in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle

August Wilson had a fraught relationship to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth, yet in his literary imagination he returned again and again to his hometown, setting nine out of the ten plays in the neighbourhood of the Hill District. For Wilson, home is collapsed with exile, and such a schism – the pull toward, and the problems of, claiming a home – is manifest throughout his dramaturgy in the repeated tropes of deeds, property, land, and fences, which find particular resonance in Radio Golf, a play he was finishing in the final weeks of his life. Wilson's dramatic vision of home, which he relentlessly probed throughout his career, pivots on the axis of displacement. This article maintains that, in Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, the gentrification of the Hill District (which was the result of a national urban renewal project) and urban migration are metonyms of the African diaspora, the initial and most devastating breach of home.