Trudier Harris and Jennifer Larson, eds.: Reading African American Contemporary Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self.

Trudier Harris and Jennifer Larson, eds. Reading African American Contemporary Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. 223 pp. $29.95.

It is fitting that editor Trudier Harris would place a discussion of Lorraine Hansberry's important but yet still devalued The Drinking Gourd (1959) at the nexus of her introduction to Reading Contemporary African American Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self. Harris retells the fictionalized story of the Southern slave Hannibal, who after being blinded for gaining literacy, refused to live under the shackles of the institution that required he yield to its stereotypes of blacks as overly complaisant, incapable of thought, and lacking self-definition. Hansberry's creation of a black male character that refused to be defined by whites' systematic form of oppression and who made it North because he persevered despite his wounds, was an essential but yet perhaps unappreciated and unwanted perspective of historical blacks. This portrait of black manhood was revolutionary and therefore controversial. In her rendition and celebration of black history, Hansberry brought to the stage a "Not-A-Tom" character, a more grating image of black identity for America to digest. It took more than a decade for the made-for-television script on slavery to be shown and once it did air, it garnered little attention.

For Harris, however, The Drinking Gourd still holds major significance. In the introduction, she illuminates how key themes of Hansberry's play--self-definition, formation of identity, stimulation of a collective consciousness--are similar to themes written by African American dramatists after 1950. It is in fact the "Hannibal moment"--the moment in which the main character sees himself as human, as a self-defined subject because of his history and place in the world--that threads together the ten contributed essays to this collection on contemporary African American drama. The writers effectively foreground the ways that post-1950 African American dramatists infused their plays with a sense of consciousness that only allowed audiences to witness the staged characters as full beings, not caricatures shaped by the institution of slavery and its aftermath.

An earnest desire to illuminate and stage African Americans as they work to (re)create identity in their everyday struggles unites the authors who focus on playwrights Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, James Baldwin, Alice Childress, Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, August Wilson, and Suzan-Lori Parks. Although plenty of scholarship exists on these playwrights, with the exception of Cleage and Parks, the authors of the essays position their arguments in a way to add varying perspectives to the already existing body of criticism. For example, in the article " 'Education has spoiled many a good plow hand:' How Beneatha's Knowledge Functions in A Raisin in the Sun," Rachelle Gold argues that the younger daughter be taken from the periphery and discussed as an essential and complicated character. Instead of being read solely as the young girl whose educational future is at stake because of bad decisions made by her big brother, Gold wants to entertain a different discussion, one that centers on Beneatha's embodiment of the clashing philosophies of both Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Perhaps Gold's article will not only historicize a critical moment in African American history where its people were trying to figure out how best to make a mark on society, either with brain or brawn, but it may even add to discussions on today's educational issues, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, which may force a shift in thought for countless children of color who may now have to engage manual work not because it's the best way to succeed, as Washington may have suggested, but because the lack of adequate funding discourages an increase in the educated pool of African Americans and other children of color.

Gold's arguments encourage the reader to think about the "Hannibal moment" at this juncture in history. How will young African American women learn to develop a self in relationship to a history that is being reshaped by changing politics and educational policies? Another example of the importance of black women's coming-of-age and racialized history is Pamela Hamilton's "Child's Play: Ntozake Shange's Audience of Colored Girls" where she discusses the significance of the choreopoem for the young female audience in particular. Hamilton refers to Shange's desire to expose young African American girls to existing information on issues of sexuality, patriarchy, abuse, and relationships. Her discussion of the play highlights the ways in which Shange intends that such weighty issues faced by the main protagonists be the vehicle not only to increase conversation but also to conquer the historical culture of silence stemming from slavery that keeps African American women still unaware, distant and detached from their own subjectivities.

Also exciting are articles like "Flyin' 'Anyplace Else': (Dis)Engaging Traumatic Memory in Three Plays by Pearl Cleage," and " 'With Deliberate Calculation': Money, Sex, and the Black Playwright in Suzan-Lori Parks's Venus," by Benjamin Sammons and Jennifer Larson, respectively. These essays contribute scholarship on playwrights in the collection who are yet to be more broadly studied and discussed. Sammons argues that the less optimistic conclusions in Cleage's Blues for an Alabama Sky and Bourbon at the Border that require the audience to witness the impact of scarring memories as a result of historical violence made for a more unwelcome reception. The more-often-read and produced Flyin' West, on the other hand, offered the audience characters that surmounted oppression through ritual, smart tactics, and a community of sisterhood.

Just as Sammons resurrects Cleage, who has been overlooked perhaps for her glossing-over of characters who cope and eventually triumph, Larson disallows Parks's Venus to be overshadowed by simplistic readings. She requires more of the reader who may have seen the character as either compliant in her self-destruction or singly exploited. Larson's discussion adds more complexity to Parks's Venus as she raises questions that encourages audiences to see characters as those that can emerge from tragedy.

Cleage and Parks differ from Hansberry in that their protagonists don't just step away from oppression, but in their refusal to be conquered by their histories they sometimes make choices that demand different questions and analyses. Implicit in both Sammons and Larson is the way in which contemporary playwrights are using their characters to redefine and broaden the "Hannibal" moment so that it continues to resonate meaningfully for blacks in America.

This collection of essays is important because it adds an element that the field of African American drama has only in short supply--collected bodies of critical analyses on contemporary dramatic works. The themed insights offer newer arguments on the philosophies of dramatists writing after 1950. Harris not only links playwrights of longer reputation such as Hansberry, Baraka and Wilson with dramatists like Cleage and Parks, but through her historical overview of plays written prior to the 1950s she also creates a dynamic continuum of discussions connected by the history of blacks in America. Her research combined with that of the essayists highlights the legacy of African Americans who, facing definition by an oppressive white society, consistently sought to declare the self. Through this important collection, students of theater experience the continued efforts of African American dramatists who chart the ways in which critical historical moments have their impact upon processes of self-definition.

Brandon L. A. Hutchinson

Southern Connecticut State University