august and africa

"If you take these people [African Americans] back over to Africa, they'll walk around trying to figure out what the hell's going on.  There's no way that they can relate to that.  But the sensibilities are African.  They are Africans who have been removed from Africa, and they are in America four hundred years later.  They're still Africans."          

~August Wilson

"The idea of Africa as metaphor, I believe, is critical as it enables Wilson to escape the romanticization and essentialization of Africa, but rather allows his 'Africa' to be constructed, to be (w)ritten within the context of the moment."

   ~Harry J. Elam, Jr.

". . ..for the young Wilson, who came of age in an era preoccupied by the concepts of cultural nationalism espoused by Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad as well as by the Black Arts Movement and Black Power movements, Africa became his center of gravity and a symbol for his mother's dominant heritage, a heritage that he wholeheartedly embraced."     

~Sandra G. Shannon

Wilson, as chronicler of the African-American experience, has responded to the durable ethos of the African continuum, which is the cultural mooring of black expression throughout the diaspora.

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~ Paul Carter Harrison

"Accordingly, to a certain degree, each of the characters within the Juba scene from Joe Turner is possessed.  However, they are not simply possessed by the 'Holy Spirit' but rather by the spirit of the past, by African tradition, by the power of the ancestors, by the 'blood memory.'"

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~ Harry J. Elam

". . ..in order to follow Wilson's agenda, it is necessary to situate his concept of Africa within the rhetorical and spiritual contexts of his dramatic universe.    

~Sandra G. Shannon