The past as present in the drama of August Wilson
By: Harry J. Elam, Jr.
Edition: First paperback edition 2006.
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Ann Arbor
Language: eng
Number of pages: 287
ISBN-13: 9780472113682; 9780472031634
Subjects: Wilson, August -- Criticism and interpretation; Historical drama, American -- History and criticism; Literature and history -- United States; African Americans in literature
Description: "Theater scholar and critic Harry J. Elam, Jr., interprets Wilson's plays in relation to concepts of memory and history, culture and resistance, and race and representation, arguing that Wilson seeks to reevaluate the past in order to understand the present. Elam also places Wilson's dramatic work in the context of contemporary African American literature, and looks at the function of music in Wilson's plays and in African American history.

The book also explores the important but often overlooked ways in which Wilson incorporates African mythology into his portrait of twentieth-century African American history."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-279) and index.
Table of contents: title: (W)righting history : a meditation in four beats; title: The music is the message; title: Fools and babes; title: The woman question; title: Men of August; title: Ogun in Pittsburgh : resurrecting the spirit; title: The rhetoric of resistance by way of conclusion.