Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be so to survive. Now, the 1950s are yielding to the the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s. The world he has learned to deal with is changing, leaving him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less.

Memphis Lee's diner--and the rest of his block--is scheduled to be torn down, a casualty of the city's renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. As they try to fight back, we meet Sterling, the ex-con who embraces the tenets of Malcolm X; Wolf, the bookie who has learned to play by the white man's rules; Risa, a waitress of quiet dignity who has mutilated her legs to distance herself from men; and Holloway,...

"Is God Is follows two twin sisters who undertake a dangerous journey to exact revenge upon their father at the behest of their ailing mother. Drawing on a diverse set of influences, including ancient tragedy, absurdism, Spaghetti Westerns, and Afropunk, Harris creates an explosive epic that examines the cyclical nature of violence. What to Send Up When it Goes Down uses a series of vignettes made up of songs, soliloquies and dialogues that range...

The humor of African-American life is inextricably tied to the humor on the African-American stage, its character shaped by the contradictions of being Black and Bewildered and Bothered in the New World. It is a humor that breathes sanity and humanity in the midst of profound circumstances. To find logic in this existence is at the heart of the African-American comic odyssey. Writers who understand the mythic comic paradigm articulate the rage, the...

The only literary collaboration between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, this play marked a turning point in African-American theater. This volume tells the story of the play's conception and inspiration and gives complete details of the irreparable rift in Hurston and Hughes's friendship that came about because of it. Also included is Hurston's short story, "Bone of Contention."