Aunt Ester's children redeemed : journeys to freedom in August Wilson's ten plays of twentieth-century Black America.
August Wilson (1945-2005) wrote one play for every decade of the twentieth century that explored black life in America for the descendants of slaves. All of his characters seek wholeness, identity and reconstituted selves after the terror of 250 years chattel slavery and its terrifying legacy. Their...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Eugene, Oregon :
Cascade Books,
[2017]
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| Summary: | August Wilson (1945-2005) wrote one play for every decade of the twentieth century that explored black life in America for the descendants of slaves. All of his characters seek wholeness, identity and reconstituted selves after the terror of 250 years chattel slavery and its terrifying legacy. Their history, culture, wisdom, joys, triumphs, pain, sufferings, victories, weaknesses and strengths are all embodied in one character, Aunt Ester. She is as old as the number of years blacks have been on these shores. All of the characters in the ten-play cycle are her children. Their search is through circumstance and adventure, certainly. This author demonstrates how Wilson uses language, poetry, the blues, to bring each play's characters to a point of wholeness, redemption and freedom, not from history, but ennobled and strengthened by it. Wilson employs fundamental theological doctrines to exhort Aunt Ester's children to remember by whom and how they were freed and made whole. |
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| Physical Description: | xix, 129 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 125-128). |
| ISBN: | 9781498237802 1498237800 9781498237826 1498237827 |