August Wilson

“In this companion to May All Your Fences Have Gates, we have a timely addition to the growing scholarship on August Wilson’s works. The focus on the second half of the cycle presents certain problems, not least of which stem from the fact that Wilson’s plays were written ‘out of order,’ simultaneously pointing forward and looking back. In less capable hands, this aspect might be ignored and the plays studied decade by decade, in a linear fashion. This volume does not fall into that trap. Instead, Nadel and his colleagues address the location of each play within the larger context of the cycle, for the second half of the cycle and the entire collection alike. As a result, we see that almost any theme or motif within a single text finds echoes and reverberations in other plays, thus affording us a view of Wilson’s overall scheme and challenging future scholarship of any single play to embrace this holistic view of the cycle. No longer is it enough to say that Wilson wrote a play or plays: whenever we consider any of his plays we have to acknowledge the cycle. This book ensures that perspective, one that is unique in the history of dramatic literature.”—Kim Pereira, author, August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey

"In this carefully crafted volume, Alan Nadel pairs a variety of essays on the plays of August Wilson's century cycle. Among the many strengths of this collection is that the selections are well connected thematically without being repetitive and that the diverse interpretations are presented in a language and style that are easily accessible, even for general readers. At the same time, the multiplicity of meanings that can be derived from careful readings of the social, cultural and historical contexts of the cycle will satisfy the most critical scholars."—Sandra Adell, author, Double Consciousness/Double Bind: Theoretical Issues in Twentieth-Century Black Literature