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Part I - Influences and Inspirations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

Edited by
Khalid Y. Long  and
Isaiah Matthew Wooden
Khalid Y. Long
Affiliation:
Howard University, Washington DC
Isaiah Matthew Wooden
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
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August Wilson in Context , pp. 9 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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References

Further Reading

Bryer, Jackson R. and Hartig, Mary C., eds., Conversations with August Wilson (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006).Google Scholar
Glasco, Laurence, ed., The WPA History of the Negro in Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greenwald, Maurine W. and Anderson, Margo, eds., Pittsburgh Surveyed: Social Science and Social Reform in the Early Twentieth Century (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Shannon, Sandra G., The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Thompson Fullilove, Mindy, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about It (New York: New Village Press, 2016).Google Scholar

Further Reading

Bigsby, C. W. E., ed., The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).Google Scholar
Braconi, Adrienne Macki, Harlem’s Theaters: A Staging Ground for Community, Class, and Contradiction, 1923–1939 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2015).Google Scholar
Diggs Colbert, Soyica, Black Movements: Performance and Cultural Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Harry, J. Elam, , Jr., The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Jones, Douglas A. Jr., The Captive Stage: Performance and the Proslavery Imagination of the Antebellum North (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Krasner, David, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, Alan, ed., May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994).Google Scholar
Nadel, Alan, The Theatre of August Wilson (London: Bloomsbury Methuen, 2018)Google Scholar
Shannon, Sandra G., The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar

Further Reading

Bigsby, Christopher, editor, The Cambridge Companion to August Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Black Public Sphere Collective, The Black Public Sphere: A Public Culture Book (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Elam, Harry J., Jr., The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Krasner, David, A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927 (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkins, Kathy A., Richards, Sandra L., Craft, Renée Alexander, and Thomas, F. DeFrantz, editors, The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre (London: Routledge, 2019).Google Scholar
Sandra G. Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, DC, Howard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Young, Harvey, editor, The Cambridge Companion to African American Theatre, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Harvey and Mecca Zabriskie, Queen, editors, Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theater and Dance, 1970–2010 (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2014).Google Scholar

Further Reading

Borges, Jorge Luis, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley (New York: Viking Penguin, 1998).Google Scholar
Crouch, Stanley, “The Novel as Blues Suite,” in The Artificial White Man: Essays on Authenticity (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 101–121.Google Scholar
Hartigan, Patti, August Wilson: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023).Google Scholar
Krebs, Edgardo, “The Purloined Borges: Translation and traduction,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2012), https://harpers.org/archive/2012/04/the-purloined-borges/.Google Scholar
Shannon, Sandra G., “Blues, History, and Dramaturgy: An Interview with August Wilson,” African American Review 27, no. 4 (Winter 1993): 539–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Further Reading

Harris, Trudier and Larson, Jennifer, eds., Reading Contemporary African American Drama: Fragments of History, Fragments of Self (New York: Peter Lang, 2007).Google Scholar
Nadel, Alan, ed., May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1994).Google Scholar
O’Meally, Robert G., ed., The Romare Bearden Reader (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019).Google Scholar
Schwartzman, Myron, Romare Bearden: His Life and Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990).Google Scholar
Wilson, August, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (New York: Plume, 1988).Google Scholar
Wilson, August, The Piano Lesson (New York: Plume, 1990).Google Scholar

Further Reading

Baldwin, James, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Vintage, 1992).Google Scholar
Clark, Keith, Black Manhood in James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines and August Wilson (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Harry J. Elam, Jr., The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Hartigan, Patti, August Wilson: A Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023).Google Scholar
Sell, Mike, Ed Bullins: Twelve Plays and Selected Writings (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006).Google Scholar

Further Reading

Jocelyn, L. Buckner, ed., A Critical Companion to Lynn Nottage (London: Routledge, 2016).Google Scholar
Harry J. Elam, Jr., The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).Google Scholar
Maley, Patrick, After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maley, Patrick, “What Is and What Aint: Topdog/Underdog and the American Hustle,” Modern Drama 56, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 186–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morisseau, Dominique, The Detroit Project (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2018).Google Scholar

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