The Theatre of August Wilson

Alan Nadel is William T. Bryan Chair of America Literature and Culture at the University of Kentucky. In addition to several books on postwar American literature and media, including Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (1988) and Television in Black-and-White America: Race and National Identity (2006), he is the editor/contributor for two volumes of essays on the drama of August Wilson: May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (1994) and August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle (2010). His poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Georgia Review, Partisan Review, Paris Review, and Shenandoah.

Acknowledgments viii

Introduction 1

1 Becoming August Wilson 3

2 History and/as Performance: The Drama of African American Historiography 17

3 Cutting the Historical Record, Recording the Blues: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 37

4 Beginning Again, Again: Gem of the Ocean and Jitney 51

5 The Boundaries of Property and the Properties of Humanity: Fences and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone 67

6 The Properties of the Piano and the Legacy of Human Property: The Piano Lesson 87

7 Urban Renewal by Any Means Necessary: Two Trains Running 109

8 “Sad Stories of the Death of Kings”: Seven Guitars and King Hedley II 127

9 The Century That Can’t Fix Nothing with the Law: Radio Golf 139

10 Critical and Performance Perspectives 159
Seven Guitars and King Hedley II: August Wilson’s Lazarus Complex Donald E. Pease 159
Performance Politics and Authenticity: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and Jitney Harry J. Elam, Jr. 179

Notes 199

References 211

Notes on Contributors 215

Index 216