August Wilson
2 books analyzed
Biography
August Wilson (1945-2005) was born Frederick August Kittel in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania — the same neighborhood where Fences is set. His father was a German immigrant baker who was largely absent; his mother, Daisy Wilson, a Black woman who raised six children largely alone, gave him his other surname when she remarried. Wilson dropped out of school at fifteen after a teacher accused him of plagiarizing a paper he had actually written. He educated himself in the library, reading Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the blues. He did not set out to write a cycle of plays. He wrote Jitney in 1979, then Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and only then realized he was writing one play per decade of the 20th century from the perspective of Black American life. Fences, set in the 1950s, was the play that made him famous — it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1987, and was revived to equal acclaim in 2010 and again in 2016 (film with Denzel Washington). Wilson died of liver cancer in Seattle in 2005, having completed all ten plays of the Pittsburgh Cycle.
August Wilson at a glance
Works
Fences
1985 · 101 pages · ★★☆☆☆ Moderate
A Black man who was great enough to have been legendary stands in his own backyard building a fence — and doesn't know whether he's keeping something out or something in.
The Piano Lesson
1987 · 108 pages · ★★☆☆☆ Moderate
A piano carved with the faces of slaves sits in a Pittsburgh living room — and whether to sell it or keep it may be the most important argument two siblings ever have.
Diction Across Works
vernacular-lyrical
blues-vernacular