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| Courtesy the Estate of August Wilson |
Christine's Minutes On the Ides of March, twelve members of the Literature Club met in Sharon’s lovely spacious living room. It was lovely. It is marvelous not to even write the words Orr Room (grateful as we are to the library). One member joined us via Zoom.
Constance rang the bell with all due solemnity.
The minutes were read and accepted.
The treasury contains $129.50, and will soon be bursting at the seams once all the dues have been paid.
Old Business: Constance informed the club that our idea for getting books into the hands of young people in Hastings in need, will not work as imagined, because in fact the Youth Council is already doing that. She pointed out that there is a charter school, just over the border in Yonkers that could use books, and perhaps we can work with them.
Joanna announced that that choices for next year’s theme have been painfully whittled down to a mere seven, and that members were asked to vote for their top three choices. The seven choices were: Children’s/Young Adult Literature; High School Required Reading Revisited; Literature Club Topic from the Year You Were Born; Literature of Canada; Nobel: Obscure Recipients or Noble, but Nobel-less; Rags and Riches: Wealth (or absence thereof) in Literature. The winner will be announced at the next meeting.
And then without further ado, the curtain rises, and have entered the world of August Wilson. But first, our presenter, Constance, wisely begins by raising a subject that is emblematic of the ways in which we all have to rethink how we read and discuss literature. August Wilson’s play are written in the vernacular of the time, and the N-word is often used, always by Black characters interacting with other Black characters. Constance asked: How do we – members of the Literature Club – feel about saying the N-word aloud when it is part of the text? There was no consensus. Several members said they would be willing to say it in the context of the play. Another member asserted that, in all her work at diversity conferences, she has learned that as far as the Black community is concerned, there is absolutely no situation in which it is acceptable for a white person to say the N-word. Going forward with the program, members either did or did not articulate the N-word, depending on their feelings/ beliefs.
August Wilson’s greatest achievement is his series of plays known as the Century Cycle, ten plays, each set in one decade of the twentieth century, most of them set in the Pittsburgh of Wilson’s youth, specifically the Hill District, known as Little Harlem.
We quickly learned that Constance who grew up in Pittsburgh, has long been a fan of Wilson’s plays. She showed us a beautiful boxed set of the entire cycle, with an introduction by John Lahr (Son-of-the-Lion).
Frederick August Kittel was born in 1945, the fourth of the six children of Daisy Wilson and Fritz Kittel, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant who was a brilliant baker, with a vicious temper. The parents divorced when August was 12, and Daisy eventually married David Bedford, who became Wilson’s beloved stepfather. Daisy cleaned houses for a living, raised her children, planted flowers in the back yard, where she also set up a card table. (A scene which will seem eerily similar to the sets of many Wilson plays.) August was her brightest child. He was sent to the Central Catholic High School, famous for its football team, but not its drama department. Already not a fan of school in general, August then went to a vocational school, then briefly to Gladstone High school, until he walked out one day. He spent the next 3 years reading at the library. (Was Carnegie – the great endower of libraries – from Pittsburgh?) His mother was not happy about her brightest child dropping out. At only 17, he scored second-highest on the Officer Training School Exam, but you had to be 19 to be an officer, so he quit the army.
Wilson returned to Pittsburgh and began to interview all the older Black men and attended all the local funerals. In 1964, at the age of 29, he bought a used typewriter for $29. He had decided to become a poet. He wrote constantly, wherever he was. He was briefly married to Brenda Burton, with whom he had his first daughter. Later he moved to St Paul, Minnesota and married Judy Oliver, a white social worker. The fact of living somewhere with so few Blacks, awoke in him an awareness of the specificity of Black voices and language. Wilson was very influenced by music, and this can be heard in all his plays.
His first play, Jitney, was finished in ten days. After it was rejected by the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, he returned to his first effort, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and this was accepted by the O’Neill.
By the time Ma Rainey made it to Broadway, Wilson had written Fences, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. At that point, it was clear to him that each play focused on issues specific to specific decades of the twentieth century. Thus was born the Century Cycle.
Members read scenes from various plays (but sadly, it was impossible to read from all ten.):
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in a 1927 Chicago recording studio
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in a Hill District boarding house in 1911
The Piano Lesson, set inside a home in the Hill District, in 1936
Seven Guitars, set in a Hill District back yard, in 1948
Radio Golf, in a Hill District realty office, in 1997
Many of us were surprised and intrigued to learn that Wilson disapproved of ‘color-blind casting’. One can only wish he were still with us, and to hear his take on the current staging of many plays, from Shakespeare to Stoppard to the newest play we haven’t yet heard of. But alas, August Wilson died of cancer at the age of 60, in 2005.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
Constance rang the bell with all due solemnity.
The minutes were read and accepted.
The treasury contains $129.50, and will soon be bursting at the seams once all the dues have been paid.
Old Business: Constance informed the club that our idea for getting books into the hands of young people in Hastings in need, will not work as imagined, because in fact the Youth Council is already doing that. She pointed out that there is a charter school, just over the border in Yonkers that could use books, and perhaps we can work with them.
Joanna announced that that choices for next year’s theme have been painfully whittled down to a mere seven, and that members were asked to vote for their top three choices. The seven choices were: Children’s/Young Adult Literature; High School Required Reading Revisited; Literature Club Topic from the Year You Were Born; Literature of Canada; Nobel: Obscure Recipients or Noble, but Nobel-less; Rags and Riches: Wealth (or absence thereof) in Literature. The winner will be announced at the next meeting.
And then without further ado, the curtain rises, and have entered the world of August Wilson. But first, our presenter, Constance, wisely begins by raising a subject that is emblematic of the ways in which we all have to rethink how we read and discuss literature. August Wilson’s play are written in the vernacular of the time, and the N-word is often used, always by Black characters interacting with other Black characters. Constance asked: How do we – members of the Literature Club – feel about saying the N-word aloud when it is part of the text? There was no consensus. Several members said they would be willing to say it in the context of the play. Another member asserted that, in all her work at diversity conferences, she has learned that as far as the Black community is concerned, there is absolutely no situation in which it is acceptable for a white person to say the N-word. Going forward with the program, members either did or did not articulate the N-word, depending on their feelings/ beliefs.
August Wilson’s greatest achievement is his series of plays known as the Century Cycle, ten plays, each set in one decade of the twentieth century, most of them set in the Pittsburgh of Wilson’s youth, specifically the Hill District, known as Little Harlem.
We quickly learned that Constance who grew up in Pittsburgh, has long been a fan of Wilson’s plays. She showed us a beautiful boxed set of the entire cycle, with an introduction by John Lahr (Son-of-the-Lion).
Frederick August Kittel was born in 1945, the fourth of the six children of Daisy Wilson and Fritz Kittel, an Austro-Hungarian immigrant who was a brilliant baker, with a vicious temper. The parents divorced when August was 12, and Daisy eventually married David Bedford, who became Wilson’s beloved stepfather. Daisy cleaned houses for a living, raised her children, planted flowers in the back yard, where she also set up a card table. (A scene which will seem eerily similar to the sets of many Wilson plays.) August was her brightest child. He was sent to the Central Catholic High School, famous for its football team, but not its drama department. Already not a fan of school in general, August then went to a vocational school, then briefly to Gladstone High school, until he walked out one day. He spent the next 3 years reading at the library. (Was Carnegie – the great endower of libraries – from Pittsburgh?) His mother was not happy about her brightest child dropping out. At only 17, he scored second-highest on the Officer Training School Exam, but you had to be 19 to be an officer, so he quit the army.
Wilson returned to Pittsburgh and began to interview all the older Black men and attended all the local funerals. In 1964, at the age of 29, he bought a used typewriter for $29. He had decided to become a poet. He wrote constantly, wherever he was. He was briefly married to Brenda Burton, with whom he had his first daughter. Later he moved to St Paul, Minnesota and married Judy Oliver, a white social worker. The fact of living somewhere with so few Blacks, awoke in him an awareness of the specificity of Black voices and language. Wilson was very influenced by music, and this can be heard in all his plays.
His first play, Jitney, was finished in ten days. After it was rejected by the O’Neill Playwrights Conference, he returned to his first effort, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and this was accepted by the O’Neill.
By the time Ma Rainey made it to Broadway, Wilson had written Fences, and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. At that point, it was clear to him that each play focused on issues specific to specific decades of the twentieth century. Thus was born the Century Cycle.
Members read scenes from various plays (but sadly, it was impossible to read from all ten.):
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, set in a 1927 Chicago recording studio
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, set in a Hill District boarding house in 1911
The Piano Lesson, set inside a home in the Hill District, in 1936
Seven Guitars, set in a Hill District back yard, in 1948
Radio Golf, in a Hill District realty office, in 1997
Many of us were surprised and intrigued to learn that Wilson disapproved of ‘color-blind casting’. One can only wish he were still with us, and to hear his take on the current staging of many plays, from Shakespeare to Stoppard to the newest play we haven’t yet heard of. But alas, August Wilson died of cancer at the age of 60, in 2005.
Respectfully submitted,
Christine Lehner, Recording Secretary
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