Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present

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This book brings together 13 plays by black women from the 1990s to the present, including works by Marita Bonner, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Sybil Kein, and Elizabeth Brown-Guillory. The plays and dramatists selected are representative of and have made considerable contributions to African American theatre. Although the works of these playwrights span over 60 years, they are closely linked by the theme of women struggling to define their roles in society. The heroines speak out against inter-racial and intra-racial biases, stereotyping, lynch mobs, illiteracy, poverty, promiscuity, self-righteousness, abusive men, rape, and miscegenation. Each play is preceded by a critical introduction that includes biographical information, an assessment of the playwright's contributions to black theatre, and a synopsis and critical analysis of the play. The bibliography that follows the plays provides selected lists of published plays, produced plays, and anthologies. An index completes the work. This collection represents an effort to make avaliable plays written by black women that have not been published or are now out of print. In recovering these plays, scholars will now be able to take a close look at the contributions that black women dramatists have made not only to African-American theatre, but to American theatre in general.

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Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present edited and complied by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, brings together 13 plays by Black women from the 1920s to the present, including works by Marita Booner, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Sybil Kein and the editor. Although the works span more than 60 years, they are closely linked by the theme of women struggling to define their roles in society. Inculudes a 19-page bibliography.-Feminist Bookstore News
"Wines in the Wilderness: Plays by African American Women from the Harlem Renaissance to the Present edited and complied by Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, brings together 13 plays by Black women from the 1920s to the present, including works by Marita Booner, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Sybil Kein and the editor. Although the works span more than 60 years, they are closely linked by the theme of women struggling to define their roles in society. Inculudes a 19-page bibliography."-Feminist Bookstore News

Author Bio

ELIZABETH BROWN-GUILLORY is Associate Professor of English at the University of Houston. Both playwright and literary critic, she is the author of two plays, Bayou Relics and Snapshots of Broken Dolls, the latter produced at Lincoln Center in 1986, and the critical book, Their Place on the Stage: Black Women Playwrights in America (Greenwood Press, 1988). She has published a host of articles and book reviews in Phylon, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, Xavier Review, The Griot, Masterplots, Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, and American Literature. Currently she is working on a critical book on playwright and novelist Alice Childress.