prison of [his] own making” (116), George, with
the help of Nandy, embarks on the painful, three-
day process of detoxification. Liberated at the end
of the novel, he buys a necklace with a monkey’s
head from a street vendor. The jewelry reminds
him of the addiction that, he knows, will always
haunt him. “I buy it and throw it on. He hangs
round my neck and the hunger [for heroin] shall
always be a threat” (185).
Blueschild Baby and Cain were showered with
accolades. Reviewers compared Blueschild Baby
to Native Son and lauded its style for its blues
resonances. According to Houston Baker, “As a
fictional autobiography, it stands at the far end
of the tradition that begins with the narrative of
Briton Hammon, matures in the work of Frederick
Douglass, expands with James Weldon Johnson’s
Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and received
acknowledgment during the early sixties in the
works of Claude Brown and Malcolm X” (89).
Cain, who continues to live in Bedford Stuyvesant,
never published a second novel.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A. Singers of Daybreak: Studies in
Black American Literature. Washington, D.C.:
Howard University Press, 1983.
Cain, George. Blueschild Baby. New York: Dell, 1970.
Michael PoindexterCaldwell, Benjamin (Ben) (1937– )
Playwright, essayist, poet, and graphic artist,
Benjamin Caldwell was born in Harlem, New
York, on September 24, 1937, the seventh of nine
children. Encouraged by a junior high school
guidance counselor, he attended the School of
Industrial Arts in New York City to become a
commercial artist, but in 1954, after his father’s
death, he was forced temporarily to abandon his
dreams of an art career to help support his family
financially. While painting and drawing to sup-
plement his income, Caldwell also wrote plays
and essays. From 1965 to 1966, Caldwell lived in
Newark, New Jersey, where he was influenced by
AMIRI BARAKA and his repertory group, the Spirit
House Players. Though he returned to New York
City before the end of 1966, Caldwell’s “Newark
Period” was the beginning of his most prolific ca-
reer as a playwright.
A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for
playwriting (1970), Caldwell wrote more than 50
plays at the height of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT,
which have been performed all over Harlem as
well as by the Black Arts Alliance in San Francisco
and throughout the United States. Employing the
revolutionary rhetoric common to the period,
Caldwell’s one-act dramas, described as “agitprop
cartoons” or “parodic vignettes,” satirize not only
white racism but also African Americans who
emulated whites, were unduly materialistic, or an-
chored themselves to stereotypes. Critics note that
Caldwell’s greatest power is his ability to commu-
nicate racial issues with both a superb economy of
dramaturgy and mordancy (Grant, 117).
Caldwell’s critically acclaimed one-act com-
edy Prayer Meeting: or, the First Militant Minister
(1967) was first performed at the Spirit House The-
atre under the title Militant Preacher. It was later
retitled and performed off-Broadway in “A Black
Quartet: Four New Plays,” along with plays by RON-
ALD MILNER, ED BULLINS, and Baraka. Praised for
its satire, the play uses a comic premise to drama-
tize the political message that black people must be
willing to struggle actively for their rights and that
they should not expect an easy accommodation
within white society. Militant Preacher is about
the conversion of a passive, “UNCLE TOM” preacher
(see SAMBO AND UNCLE TOM). While praying to
God for assistance in dealing with a potentially
volatile congregation, angry over the murder of a
black teenager by the police, the preacher receives
an answer from God, in the form a thief hiding
in his home who pretends to be the voice of God.
The preacher adheres to God’s demand, becomes
a black militant, and leads his parishioners to City
Hall in protest.
Caldwell’s other plays, which examine such
themes as the exploitation of blacks, Christian-
ity, materialism, gullibility, entrapment, and birth
control, include The Job (1966), The Wall (1967),Caldwell, Benjamin 87