Ocean State Libraries

"August Wilson (1945-2005) was a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who had a particular talent for capturing the authentic, everyday voice of Black Americans. As a child, he read off soup cans and cereal boxes, and when his mother brought him to the library, his whole world opened up. After facing intense prejudice at school from both students and some teachers, August dropped out. However, he continued reading and educating himself independently....

Riveting, funny, heartbreaking, at once raw and lyrical: these journals reveal the complexity of the actor/writer who invented the autobiographical monologue and perfected the form in such celebrated works as Swimming to Cambodia.
Here is the first intimate portrait we have of the man behind the charismatic performer who ended his life in 2004: evolving artist, conflicted celebrity, a man struggling for years with depression before finally...

A revealing portrait of one of the most gifted and charismatic, yet least understood, Black artists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance...

"The first authoritative biography of August Wilson, the most important and successful American playwright of the late 20th century, by a theater critic who knew him"--

Presents an authorized portrait of the Pulitzer Prize- and first woman Tony Award-winning playwright that includes coverage of the private tragedies that overshadowed her high-achieving family, the premature birth of her fatherless daughter and her early death.