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Chapter 12 - Transformative Movements

August Wilson and the Great Migration

from Part II - Politics and Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 June 2025

Khalid Y. Long
Affiliation:
Howard University, Washington DC
Isaiah Matthew Wooden
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
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Summary

August Wilson once suggested that African Americans leaving the US South during the Great Migration was one of the worst things that happened to the community. Because the Great Migration and the chronicle of African and African American migrants’ histories/herstories are intertwined discussions, this chapter suggests that the American Century Cycle enables Wilson to design a culturally specific study of the affects and effects of the migration on the characters and geographic spaces he plots. It considers how Wilson uses the plays in the cycle to demonstrate his point while also providing hope that, even within the urban North, the realities of the South and transformation of Southern mores will not be forgotten or ignored.

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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 of Mississippi Press, 2006).Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Peter, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks’ Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Shannon, Sandra G., The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, DC: Howard University Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Trotter, Joe W., ed., The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class and Gender (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Isabel, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York: Vintage, 2010).Google Scholar

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