Contemporary Literature, 1970 to Present
suburb where they faced overt racism that caused Wilson to move from school
to school. Against his mother’s wishes, he eventually dropped out of Gladstone
High School in 1961 after being falsely accused of plagiarizing. In 1963 he joined
the army and was discharged after only one year. Soon after, he moved back to the
Hill, his childhood neighborhood.
With a used typewriter, purchased for $20 in 1965, Wilson embarked upon a
writing career. Despite a lack of formal training, he began writing poetry, find-
ing inspiration in the Black Power movement and jazz music. Around this time,
Wilson also adopted the first name August and his mother’s maiden name,
signaling a growing identification and pride in his African American heritage.
These influences appear in his first publication, the poem “For Malcolm X and
Others” (1969). Wilson also found inspiration by working with and around
other struggling writers. He helped form the Center Avenue Poets Theatre
Workshop in 1965 and cofounded the Black Horizons Theatre Company in
Pittsburgh.
A 1973 production of Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead encouraged
Wilson to try his hand at drama. His earliest works include Recycle (produced
in 1973), The Coldest Day of the Year (eventually produced in 1989) and The
Homecoming (eventually produced in 1989) whose subject matter foreshadows his
first Broadway success, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (produced, 1984). These early
plays are marked by the influence of the mannerisms, experiences, and speech
of the African American community in Pittsburgh’s Hill neighborhood. But
it was not until he moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1977 to take a job writing
children’s plays for the Science Museum that Wilson “felt [he] could hear voices
for the first time accurately.” In St. Paul, Wilson wrote the musical satire, Jitney!
(produced, 1978), Black Bart and the Sacred Hills (produced, 1981), and Fullerton
Street (produced, 1980), submitting all three in different years to the Eugene
O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference. All were rejected. For
Jitney!, however, Wilson was awarded a Jerome Fellowship to develop his work
at the Playwrights’ Center of Minneapolis, where staged readings of Jitney! and
Fullerton Street were performed.
In 1982 the breakthrough leading to Wilson’s repeated successes on Broad-
way came: Lloyd Richards, dean of the Yale School of Drama and artistic direc-
tor of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference
accepted Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom for the conference, where it was given a staged
reading. Thus began a collaboration, with Wilson as writer and Richards as
director, that led to a series of successful plays: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences
(1985), Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986), The Piano Lesson (1987), Two Trains
Running (1990), and Seven Guitars (1995). All but the last took similar routes to
Broadway—initial staging at the O’Neill Theater Center, followed by productions
at regional theaters.
Wilson’s use of blues and other structural elements of black American culture
marks a shift in American dramatic tradition. In a 1987 interview he confessed:
“I haven’t read Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare—except The Merchant of Venice in ninth
grade. The only Shakespeare I’ve ever seen was Othello last year at Yale Rep. I’m
not familiar with Death of a Salesman. I haven’t read Tennessee Williams. I very