#Non-fiction August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle

• Editor: S. Shannon
• Title: August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle (13 essays)
• Published: 2016
• Wikipedia link:  August Wilson (1945 – 2005)
• List of Challenges 2019
• Monthly reading plan
• #20BooksOfSummer

 

Introduction:

1. August Wilson understood the power of the theater.
2. He used it to its full potential by
3. …inserting honesty and realism into every play.
4. Some consider August Wilson “America’s Shakespeare”.
5. August Wilson was an American playwright
6. …who did the unheard of- penning ten plays.
7. …one for each decade of the 20th C.

 

1.  Wilson received two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama:
2.  Fences (1987), The Piano Lesson (1990)
3. These 10 plays gives a glimpse into
4. …American history through the
5. …lens of the Black experience.
6. August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle is a
7. …series of critical essays about the plays.
8. I have reviewed the first 5 essays
9. …you can discover the rest of the book yourself!

 

Conclusion:

1. Essays 1-6 were interesting
2. Essays 7-13 …seemed to repeat many thoughts
3. about two plays: Gem of the Ocean and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.
4. Weak point: the essays do  NOT explain all 10 plays
5. One of the most famous play is Fences  NOT reviewed!
6. It is considered  the African-American version
7. ot The Death of a Salesman
8. A few essays were very instructive about…
9. Seven Guitars, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
10. ….but still feel  that the book
11. does not live up to my expectations.
12. #Disappointed

 

Plays:

• Jitney (1982) (no reviewed in an essay)
  
• Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984)
• Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1984)
• Fences (1987)  (no reviewed in an essay)
  
• The Piano Lesson (1990)
• Two Trains Running (1991)  (no reviewed in an essay…at length)
  
• Seven Guitars (1995)
• King Hedley II (1999)
• Gem of the Ocean (2003)
• Radio Golf (2005)  (no reviewed in an essay)
  

 

Essays:

1. The  emancipated century – J.H. Scott  ( 2 plays discussed) – easy to read

1. Play: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone 
2. Set in 1911… the play is about African Americans cut adrift  by
3. The Great Migration to the North and by slavery from their African past.
4. The  characters meet in a boarding house
5. They represent a cross-section of  African Americans.
6. The boarders are  in the midst of a
7. …massive search for their “song,” or identity.

 

1. Play: The Piano Lesson
2. Set in 1936…this is a …
3. Family conflict between Bernice and her
4. …brother Boy Willie about the family piano.
5. For Boy Willie the piano is a way to get some quick cash to buy land. 
6. For Bernice, the piano is a source of strength.
7. It reminds her of the courage and endurance shown by her ancestors.
8. Boy Willie looks to the future
9. …while Bernice looks to the past.

 

2. Situated identity in The Janitor (J. Zeff):  short essay about a play that is NOT in the cycle.

1. The Janitor is a 1985  4 minute play.
2. A janitor is someone society ignores.
3. He is left to sweep the floor.
4. The janitor gets an idea.
5. …sees a microphone in an empty hall
6. …and just starts talking.
7. Message:  identity is a work in progress which is in your control,
8. “…but what you are now ain’t what you gonna become.”

 

3. Two Trains Running (S. Saddler, P. Bryant-Jackson) – This essay did not appeal to me. SKIM!

1. This was a  comparison of two books by
2. American scholars Living Black History, M. Marable and
3. The Archive and the Repertoire, D. Taylor.
4. Where is the play?
5. I noticed they referred to the play
6. Two Trains Running  but do NOT review this play at length
7. …so I decided to skim this essay and
8. …investigate the Pulitzer Prize 1992 play on Wikipedia.
9. I learned more on Wiki…than in his essay!

 

4. World War II History (E. Bonds) – excellent essay,  I learned a lot about the difficult period just after WW II.  Black men struggle to move on after the war. They feel they are not benefiting from the post WW II economic boom.  They feel like…they are still fighting.

1. Play: Seven Guitars
   
2. Set in 1948…
3. …The play begins and ends after the funeral of one of the main characters.
4. Events leading to the funeral  are revealed in flashbacks.
5. The essay explains the 7 characters (7 guitars) and their
6. individual out-of-tune chords (life experiences).
7. What I did not realize was how important the boxer
8. Joe Lewis was for the African American community.
9. Wilson uses Lewis’s fame and downfall as an essential part of the play.
10. It is so sad to read that  African American GI’s were fighting
11. …on two fronts:
12. the enemy overseas….and racism at home.

 

5. Stereotype and Archetype in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (M. Downing) – best explanation difference stereotype vs archetype I’ve ever read.  Excellent essay, lucidly-written, logically-structured, and convincingly argued.

1. Play: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
2. Set in 1920s…the historic exploitation of
3. black recording artists by white producers.
4. The essay explains how August Wilson started with
5. stereotypes assigned by whites to blacks in the play.
6. Then he remakes them into archetypes.
7. I would have missed this
8. …completely by just reading the play!
9. Wilson places the stereotype (ST) at the beginning of the play
10. …adds monologues…adds POV of African American characters
11. …draws the original ST (evokes criticism, suspicion, scorn)
12. …into an archetype (evokes empathy, understanding, compassion)
13. Example: Ma Rainey is introduced as
14. ST: chaotic, unreasonable, difficult, a risk with the law
    
15. Wilson breaks this ST into components and rebuilds Ma as
16. AT: mother, queen, goddess