August Wilson Essay Example
August Wilson: Black and Blue
In this paper, I am going to explore two of his plays, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I am also going to discuss how blues music influenced Wilson in his life and in his work as well as how blues music influences the characters within these plays. I am also going to explore how these characters use blues music to escape their blues as well as how blues music relates to their lives. I would also like to discuss how August Wilson uses great African-American historical figures as influences in writing his plays as well as the struggle the characters experience because of segregation through de-segregation. August Wilson is one of America’s most prolific writers, whose plays are produced throughout the country on a regular basis. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and has earned twenty three honorary degrees for his works. He has said that he has no particular method of writing his plays. He wrote ten plays in his lifetime as well as other books on the African-America culture. Wilson’s writing was influenced by two events, Blues music and the Black Arts Movement. None of the African-American writers had been acknowledged as quickly as August Wilson. His style of writing and his use of the “black street vernacular” language help pave the way for a very successful future. In interviews, Wilson was asked where he got his inspiration and he always responded with “the four B’s: Writers Amiri Baraka and Jorge Luis Borgers, painter Romare Bearden, and the blues” Regarding Bearden, Wilson claimed, "When I saw his work, it was the first time that I had seen black life presented in all its richness, and I said, 'I want to do that—I want my plays to be the equal of his canvases.'" (Mehling). As a young man, bought stacks of old record albums for a nickel each and came across Bessie Smith. It was her song “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine” that helped Wilson realize
In this paper, I am going to explore two of his plays, Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. I am also going to discuss how blues music influenced Wilson in his life and in his work as well as how blues music influences the characters within these plays. I am also going to explore how these characters use blues music to escape their blues as well as how blues music relates to their lives. I would also like to discuss how August Wilson uses great African-American historical figures as influences in writing his plays as well as the struggle the characters experience because of segregation through de-segregation. August Wilson is one of America’s most prolific writers, whose plays are produced throughout the country on a regular basis. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and has earned twenty three honorary degrees for his works. He has said that he has no particular method of writing his plays. He wrote ten plays in his lifetime as well as other books on the African-America culture. Wilson’s writing was influenced by two events, Blues music and the Black Arts Movement. None of the African-American writers had been acknowledged as quickly as August Wilson. His style of writing and his use of the “black street vernacular” language help pave the way for a very successful future. In interviews, Wilson was asked where he got his inspiration and he always responded with “the four B’s: Writers Amiri Baraka and Jorge Luis Borgers, painter Romare Bearden, and the blues” Regarding Bearden, Wilson claimed, "When I saw his work, it was the first time that I had seen black life presented in all its richness, and I said, 'I want to do that—I want my plays to be the equal of his canvases.'" (Mehling). As a young man, bought stacks of old record albums for a nickel each and came across Bessie Smith. It was her song “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine” that helped Wilson realize