Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays ed. by Sandra G. Shannon
As one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatist August Wilson (1945–2005) has been the source of countless debates and critical studies since his emergence on the theatre scene in the early 1980s. Indeed, Wilson’s skillful dramaturgy, mainstream success, and well-documented support of black nationalism continues to capture the imagination of numerous scholars, including Sandra Shannon, Harry Elam Jr., Sandra Richards, Dana Williams, Marilyn Elkins, Kim Pereira, and Brandi Wilkins Catanese. August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle: Critical Perspectives on the Plays, a collection of thirteen essays, departs from previous studies by exploring the lesser-known aspects of Wilson’s life and works. Building on the previous scholarship of Elam, editor Shannon’s beautifully written introduction situates Wilson as an “autoethnographer of the black experience” and “archetypical wounded healer” (6). The critical essays, written by directors, dramaturgs, and scholars, expound on Shannon’s thesis through close readings of Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of ten plays that document the history and struggles of African Americans.
The collection of interdisciplinary essays incorporate multiple lenses, including oral history, social-development theory, food politics, and black feminist theory, to offer a unique perspective on the relationship among Wilson’s life, ideologies, and dramas. Essays written by Jacqueline Zeff, Michael Downing, Jesselyn Collins-Frohlich, and Psyche Williams-Forson in particular provide new insights into Wilson’s cycle. Zeff’s “‘A big bend there, a tree by the shore’: Situated Identity in The Janitor,” for example, explores Wilson’s lesser-known four-minute drama, The Janitor. Her essay utilizes psychosocial-development models to understand how the play illuminates black male agency and the construction of racial identity. In so doing, Zeff also offers readers new insights into the concerns that Wilson would later explore in his Pittsburgh Cycle and his controversial speech, “The Ground on Which I Stand” (1996).
Downing’s “The Use of Stereotype and Archetype in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” provides a clear and detailed analysis of Wilson’s dramaturgical approach to disrupting cultural stereotypes of black womanhood. His essay includes contextual information that undergraduate students would find particularly helpful, as well as meaningful insights into the construction of stereotypes from black feminist theorist Patricia Hill Collins.
Collins-Frohlich’s “Reclaiming the Mother: Women, Documents, and the Condition of the Mother in Gem of the Ocean and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” provides an engaging discussion of the importance of motherhood in constructing racial boundaries. She suggests that historically, the “condition of the mother”—meaning the mother’s status as bound or free—served as a “vital tool for maintaining communities and ensuring cultural continuity in the face of increasing pressure to conform to dominant, white values” (102). Collins-Frohlich then offers insights into how the characters Ma and Aunt Ester use a “counterinsurgent approach” to cultural empowerment. Teachers will find this essay particularly meaningful in classroom discussions when coupled with criticism about Wilson’s representation of African American women.
Williams-Forson’s “‘He gonna give me my ham’: The Use of Food as a Symbol of Social Justice” provides a much-needed analysis of Wilson’s use of food interactions in everyday life. Indeed, she uses The Piano Lesson and Two Trains Running to investigate how the rituals of everyday food performances foster survival, community, and African American expressive culture. Williams-Forson breaks ground by focusing her analysis on Rita, an often-ignored character in literary analyses of Two Trains Running, arguing that Rita, along with African American female characters like Bertha Holly in Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, operate outside of traditional definitions of social activism. The lens of food politics, therefore, provides greater understanding of how these women operate as “cultural workers” (136) with transformative power. Dramaturgs, as well as readers unfamiliar with food politics, will find this essay particularly engaging and meaningful.
August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle concludes with Susan Abbotson’s “Re-Evaluating the Legacy of...
