She tends to get a faraway look when recalling youthful fantasies about breaking bread with the Bronte sisters or hanging out with Hemingway at some Paris bar. Her laugh is gentle, almost girlish. Her plays, however, are another thing entirely. In a body of work written over the last four decades, Kennedy has created a surreal world in which romantic innocents are threatened by the persistent presence of racism. Rage lurks beneath the surface.
Time is all topsy-turvy.
History is fluid. Violence is inevitable. There's the person getting ready to walk out now and teach, and there's the person who writes the plays. I don't know that person, although I've come to trust her. I'm a mystery to myself.