August Wilson Life Personal Achievements and His Plays

Document Type:Research Paper

Subject Area:English

Document 1

His mother raised him, together with his siblings in a two-roomed apartment which had no access to hot water: what most blacks could afford at the moment (Elam, 2006). His mother took him to basic school where he studied alongside white students. Being the only black in a white’s school, he went through a difficult time forcing him to drop out of school. He was bullied and racially discriminated against in several occasion. He was also accused by one of his teachers of plagiarism leading to him dropping out of school. Wilson Wrote ten plays in The Pittsburgh Cycle, each for the ten decades of the past century highlighting the struggles of black people and “… driven by a deep-rooted existential quest to get at the truth of his existence”( Shannon, 2016).

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He wrote the play “Gem of the Ocean” in 2002 to represent the first decade of the twentieth century. The play was set in Pittsburgh in 1904 and featured a man whose small crime had caused harm to another man forcing him to seek spiritual healing from another character who claims to be 285 years. The second play “Joe Turner Come and Gone” was written in 1986 to represent the second decade. The play was set in 1911 and feature former slaves highlighting their experience with racial discrimination. It highlighted the economic injustices the blacks went through. Although slavery had been abolished at the time, the blacks still underwent racial discrimination which disadvantaged them economically. “Jitney” was set in a taxi station and highlighted the conflicts among drivers brought about by legacy, identity, and generational difference.

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