"If the blues is the wash of black suffering hung up to dry in the sun of pitiless self-reflection, then August Wilson was our greatest lyrical washerman. He was also the most gifted blues poet on the American stage. He bathed the soil of bigotry in the rhetoric of black spirituality. And he made raucous black vernacular an agitator to stir hope into motion. 'I think the blues is the best literature that we as blacks have created since we’ve been here,' Wilson said. 'And it’s a lot of philosophical ideas. I call it our sacred book. So what I’ve attempted to do is mine that field, to mine those cultural ideas and attitudes and give them to my characters.' When Wilson says the blues are literature, he is not exaggerating its importance but underscoring the blues’ sublime literary qualities. ..."
HUMANITIES, March/April 2015
PBS: August Wilson and the Blues (Video)
August Wilson: Poetic playwright as historian (Audio)
[PDF] August Wilson and the African-American Odyssey By Kim Pereira
Hill District Map
2017 July: Fences (2016), 2017 August: The Ground on Which I Stand, a Speech on Black Theatre and Performance (1992), 2018 July: Pittsburgh Cycle, 2018 August: August Wilson in St. Paul: A MN Original Special
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