Fences
August Wilson (1985)
“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.”
At a Glance
Troy Maxson, a 53-year-old Black garbage collector in 1950s Pittsburgh, was once a gifted baseball player barred from the major leagues by segregation. He builds a fence in his backyard, fights with his son Cory over football, betrays his wife Rose with an affair that produces a child, and slowly alienates everyone who loves him. When Troy dies, those left behind must reckon with what he gave them, what he took, and what the fence was always for.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
Fences won both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1987, making August Wilson one of only seven playwrights to win the Pulitzer for drama twice (he won again for The Piano Lesson in 1990). It is widely taught as one of the essential works of American drama and as the most accessible entry point to Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle — the most ambitious sustained dramatic project in American theatrical history.
Diction Profile
Black Pittsburgh vernacular rooted in the blues tradition — informal in surface texture, formally structured in rhythm and repetition
High