“I got the power of death” (Wilson 29). You might recognize this quote from Boy Willie in The Piano Lesson by August Wilson an African American play writer. In this essay I am going to highlight some things about his life. According to (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia) August Wilson was born on April 27, 1945 in the town of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. He was born Frederick August Kittel, Jr. Son of a German immigrant named Frederick August Kittel and his mother was an African-American named Daisy Wilson. August was the fourth out of six children. He and his siblings were raised in a two-room apartment above a grocery store for most of August Wilsons childhood.
After Wilson's parents divorced his mother married David Bedford, his mother and his siblings moved to a mostly white suburb in the Oakland section in 1961. After being bullied from the student’s everyday he transferred to Connelly Vocational High School, and later on to Gladstone High School. According to (www.biography.com) when August was 15 years old, he pursued an independent education at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. August dropped out because of his teacher accusing him of plagiarizing a twenty page report about Napoleon.
According to the World Book (Adler) “August Wilson was a leading African American play wright. His work is a cycle of ten plays called "The Pittsburgh Cycle" that traces the black experience in America.” Mr.Wilson did a total number of ten play based on the 20th century. A play for each decade. August wrote about the ever changing texture of the African American life. The play for each decade idea didn't come to him till later when he looked at the dates of his previous plays; 1911, 1927, 1941, 1957, and 1971. He thought about it and the idea of a...
... middle of paper ...
...
1. Adler, Thomas. "Wilson August." World Book.. 1st. Chicago: 2008. Print.
2. "A Playwright's Work Is Never Done." Tell Me More 8 May 2007. General OneFile. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
3. "A Widow's Might." Tell Me More 8 May 2007. General OneFile. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
4. "Wilson marquee." Hollywood Reporter 18 Oct. 2005: 3. General OneFile. Web. 12 Dec. 2013.
5. "August Wilson." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Dec 12 2013, 02:13
6. "August Wilson." The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2001, 2002. Answers.com 12 Dec. 2013. http://www.answers.com/topic/august-wilson
7. "August Wilson." Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1994-2010. Answers.com 12 Dec. 2013. http://www.answers.com/topic/august-wilson
8. Wilson, August. The Piano Lesson. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007. Print
As Floyd is falling down on the stage, my heart is teared apart resonating with miserable life of African-American people in 1940s Pittsburgh. I have seen how people struggle with their assigned and unfair destiny and how the brutal reality smashes their dreams and humanity; I have seen that there were a group of people singing, dreaming, fighting, loving and dying in the red-brick house, which I might pass by everyday, all in this masterpiece of August Wilson. It is always difficult to reopen the grievous wound of the dark period during America history; however, the hurtfulness would be the most effective way forcing people to reflect the consequence of history.
Harris, Trudier. "The Trickster in African American Literature." Freedom's Story Teacher Serve (n.d.). 05 03 2014. <>.
- - - . "Donald Goines," DLB 33, Afro-American Fiction Writers After 1955, eds Thadious M. Davis and Trudier Harris, 1984, 96-100.
Nadel, Alan. August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-century Cycle. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 2010. Print.
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
August Wilson was born in 1945, in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was one of the most acclaimed American playwrights of the 20th century. His plays won two Pulitzer Prizes in drama, one for Fences and the other for The Piano Lesson, eight New York Drama Critics ' Circle Awards, and the highest honor on Broadway, the Tony Award. He married three times. His first wife was Brenda Burton, a Muslim, with whom he had a daughter named Sakina Ansari. After the marriage ended in 1972, he later married his second wife, Judy Oliver, a white social worker, who fiscally supported him during the early years of his career as a playwright. After their divorce in 1990, he later married his third wife, Constanza Romero, a costume designer, with whom he had a daughter named Azula Carmen. He died of liver cancer on October 2, 2005. Then two weeks later, the Virginia Theatre in New York City was renamed the August Wilson Theatre in his honor. Then on May 30, 2007, the State of Pennsylvania designated his childhood home a historical landmark. His mother’s name was Daisy, similar to Rose, is the name of a flower which symbolizes the love, kindness, care, and upbringing mothers show their kids. She practically had to raise four kids alone because of the absence of support from her husband. She is an example of the silencing of women. She was in an interracial marriage, which caused them to move to a new neighborhood where she was a victim of racial prejudice. During this time, whenever someone fell victim to racial prejudice people usually threw bricks through their windows in order to intimidate them to leave, so this might have been one of the problems his mom faced along with feeling out of place and getting bitter looks from the neighbors
Callahan, John F. In the African-American Grain: The Pursuit of Voice in Twentieth-Century Black Fiction. University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago. 1988.
Winner of multiple awards such as the Tony Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, August Wilson is known most for his forceful cultural plays. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Wilson was born to a white father that later abandoned his family, and a black mother. Wilson dropped out of school in the ninth grade after being accused of plagiarism. Wilson after went to public libraries and read various books; this was an initiation for Wilson and his successful future. When Wilson first started writing he didn’t think he was able to write his own works because of such great writers before him. “Quote black literature criticism”. However Wilson has managed to accomplish great works such as his second Pulitzer Award winning play, The Piano Lesson. The play introduces an outstanding and dynamic cultural view of many black Americans in the twentieth century. It conveys a family feud that is set off by a piano, a miraculous piano. In The Piano Lesson, August Wilson introduces two siblings, Boy Willie Charles and Berniece Charles Crawley, set in 1937. Wilson first reveals that Boy Willie lives in Mississippi, and Berniece lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (set of the play). This identification of the two allows the audience and reader to know that there is and will be a difference between the two siblings.
It is important to not that the direction of Brooks’s literary career shifted dramatically in the late 1960’s. While attending a black writers’ conference she was struck by the passion of the young poets. Before this happened, she had regarded herself as essentially a universalist, who happened to be black. After the conference, she shifted from writing about her poems about black people and life to writing for the black population.
...ings of Chesnutt and Wilson were helpful in bringing out the reality behind the inequality towards these individuals. Both writers boldly wrote about issues that were highly controversial in their day and did so successfully especially Wilson who in the autobiographical novel stressed the importance of one's skin color as the measure of their power in the society. Overall, these authors presented the relentless challenges mulattoes had to undergo while at the same time describing the racial truths of the past as well as today.
“The Charmer” by Budge Wilson is a short story about a Canadian family that finds misfortune and conflict within their lives. Conflict being the predominant theme which directly affects all the participants in the family. The story is written in third person and narrated from the young girl Winifred’s point of view. Budge Wilson uses Zack’s smothered childhood, charming personality and irresponsible behaviour to create emotional conflict between members of the family.
2. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African American Literary Criticism. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
3. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 51: Afro-American Writers from the Harlem Renaissance to 1940. A Bruccoli Clark Layman Book. Edited by Trudier Harris, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Gale Group, 1987. pp. 133-145.
Margolies, Edward. “History as Blues: Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Native Sons: A Critical Study of Twentieth-Century Negro American Authors. J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968. 127-148. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Daniel G. Marowski and Roger Matuz. Vol. 54. Detroit: Gale, 1989. 115-119. Print.
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." [1951] Literature. 5th ed. Eds. James H. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, 1027-28.