Enacting Cultural Identity : Time and Memory in 20Th-Century African-American Theater by Female Playwrights
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Enacting Cultural Identity: Time and Memory in 20th-Century African-American Theater by Female Playwrights Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades des Doktors der Philosophie (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt von Simone Friederike Paulun an der Geisteswissenschaftliche Sektion Fachbereich Literaturwissenschaft Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 13. Februar 2012 Referentin: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Aleida Assmann Referentin: PD Dr. Monika Reif-Hülser Konstanzer Online-Publikations-System (KOPS) URL: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:352-0-269861 Acknowledgements 1 Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and support of several individuals who in one way or another contributed to the writing and completion of this study. It gives me a great pleasure to acknowledge the help of my supervisor Prof Dr. Aleida Assmann who has supported me throughout my thesis and whose knowledge, guidance, and encouragement undoubtedly highly benefited my project. I would also like to thank PD Dr. Monika Reif-Hülser for her sustained interest in my work. The feedback that I received from her and the other members of Prof. Assmann’s research colloquium was a very fruitful source of inspiration for my work. The seeds for this study were first planted by Prof. David Krasner’s course on African- American Theater, Drama, and Performance that I attended while I was an exchange student at Yale University, USA, in 2005/2006. I am immensely grateful to him for introducing me to this fascinating field of study and for sharing his expert knowledge when we met again in December 2010. A further semester of residence as a visiting scholar at the African American Department at Yale University in 2010 enabled me to receive invaluable advice from Prof. Elizabeth Alexander and from Prof. Robert Stepto whose interest in my work underscored my enthusiasm for working on African-American theater by female playwrights. The dissertation writing group I started in 2009 with fellow doctoral students was an invaluable help throughout the whole writing process. This thesis would not have been possible without the consistent and encouraging feedback of Svenja Menkhaus, Emily Petermann, and Anja Krüger, who read nearly all parts of this dissertation. I am also indebted to the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes) for providing me with a PhD fellowship that enabled me to fully concentrate on my work. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my partner Dirk and to my parents Monika and Axel for their unflagging encouragement and loving support throughout my studies and this challenging project. Thank you very much. Abbreviations 2 Abbreviations RA Grimké, Angela Weld. "Rachel (1916)." Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Ted Shine. Vol. 1. New York: Free Press. 1996. 133-68. TTSD burrill, Mary. "They That Sit in Darkness (1919)." Black Theater, U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Ted Shine. New York: Free Press, 1974. 178-83. CS Hurston, Zora Neale. "Color Struck. A Play in Four Scenes (1925)." Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays before 1950. Ed. Perkins, Kathy A. bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. 89-102. FUC Livingston, Myrtle Smith. "For Unborn Children (1926)." Black Theater, U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Ted Shine. New York: Free Press, 1974. 184-87. EN Gilbert, Mercedes. "Environment (1931)." Lost Plays of the Harlem Renaissance, 1920-1940. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Leo Hamalian. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1996. 201-26. RIS Hansberry, Lorraine. "A Raisin in the Sun (1959)." Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans, 1847 to Today. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Ted Shine. New York: Free Press. 1996. 512-54. WIW Childress, Alice. "Wine in the Wilderness (1969)." Black Theater, U.S.A.: Forty-Five Plays by Black Americans, 1847-1974. Eds. Hatch, James V. and Ted Shine. New York: Free Press, 1974. 737-55. FCG Shange, Ntozake. "for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf: a choreopoem. (1976)." New York: Scribner Poetry, 1997. CM Wolfe, George C. "The Colored Museum (1988)." Black Theatre USA: Plays by African Americans. Eds. Hatch, James Vernon and Ted Shine. Rev. and expanded ed. Vol. 2. New York: Free Press. 451-72. WMW Jackson, Judith Alexa. "WOMbmanWARs (1992)." Moon Marked and Touched by Sun: Plays by African-American Women. Ed. Mahone, Sydné. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1994. 143-85. AP Parks, Suzan-Lori. "The America Play (1994)." The America Play and Other Works. Ed. Parks, Suzan-Lori. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1995. 157-99. TD/UD Parks, Suzan-Lori. "Topdog/Underdog (2001)." New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2013. Table of Contents 3 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 1 Abbreviations 2 Table of Contents 3 1. Introduction 6 1.1 Time, Memory, and the Construction of African-American Identity 10 1.2 Text Selection 12 1.3 Structure 16 2. Time in Memory – Memory in Time: Collective Memory and African-American Identity 22 2.1 The Remote Past and Cultural Memory 23 2.2 The Recent Past and Communicative Memory 29 2.3 The Present and the Role of the Theater 31 3. Slave Ancestors and Mythic Geography: The Cultural Narrative of Slavery on Stage 37 3.1 Identifying with Slave Ancestors 38 3.2 The Symbolic American North-South Divide 42 3.2.1 Enacting the South 43 3.2.2 Enacting the North 47 3.3 Conclusion 52 4. The Idea of Mother Africa and African-American Identity 54 4.1 African Names 56 4.2 African “Accessories” 57 4.3 Idealizing the “African Queen” 64 4.4 Affirming Black Theater Aesthetics 70 4.5 Conclusion 76 Table of Contents 4 5. Cultural Figures to Re-Construct the Past 80 5.1 Personal Role Models 81 5.2 A Gallery of Cultural Heroes 86 5.3 History in the Making 88 5.4 Conclusion 93 6. Learning from Absent Ancestors and Living Elders: Family Memory on Stage 96 6.1 Continuity: Absent Ancestors as Positive Role Models 98 6.2 Discontinuity: Absent Ancestors as Negative Role Models 104 6.3 Family Memory and African-American History 107 6.4 Conclusion 110 7. Dramaturgy of Time: Re-Lived Gender Memories in Ntozake Shange’s for colored girls 115 7.1 A Colored Female Group Protagonist 117 7.2 Re-Lived Memories on Stage 121 7.3 Two Kinds of “Colored Girls” 124 7.4 Uniting the Stage and the Auditorium 127 7.5 Conclusion 129 8. African-American Language Identity on Stage 133 8.1 Naming, Un-Naming, Re-Naming 134 8.2 Classificatory Systems: African-American Nomenclature 137 8.3 Varieties and Standards: African-American English (AAE) 142 8.3.1 Ethnic Differences 144 8.3.2 Regional and Generational Differences 146 8.3.3 AAE and the Collective Past 148 8.4 Conclusion 151 9. Engendering Time: Black Motherhood and Male Maturity 154 9.1 Different Female Family Generations 156 9.2 The Issue of Black Motherhood 159 9.2.1 Becoming Old by Suffering 163 9.2.2 Self-Love and Female Solidarity 167 9.3 Male Maturity, or: “I couldn’t see until you came, baby” 173 9.4 Conclusion 177 10. Theater of the Present: Writing to the Moment and to the Audience 180 10.1 The Present in the Stage Directions 181 10.2 References to Social History and Political Landmarks 183 Table of Contents 5 10.3 African-American Music and Musical References 187 10.4 Conclusion 190 11. Conclusion: Re-Thinking the African-American Literary Canon 192 12. Continuation with a Difference – A Brief Outlook 199 13. Complete Bibliography 212 13.1 Primary Literature 212 13.2 Secondary Literature 213 14. Deutsche Zusammenfassung 230 1. Introduction 6 1. Introduction The road to bLACK LIbERTY is paved with bLACK CULTURE. bLACK CULTURE is the sum of all expressions of bLACK THOUGHT, of bLACK LOVE and of bLACK ART which, throughout history have enabled the black race to be less enslaved by the cultural shackles of colonialism.1 When I first told a much valued colleague and a dear friend of mine about my intention to work on 20th-century African-American theater by female playwrights, she was quite astonished and asked me which authors I was thinking of. Holding an M.A. in African- American Studies, she was of course familiar with female playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry and Ntozake Shange whose plays A Raisin in the Sun (1959) and for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf (1976) were also produced on broadway. She had however never heard of Mary burrill, Myrtle Smith Livingston, Mary Mercedes Gilbert, or Judith Alexa Jackson. Over the course of working on my dissertation I received several similar reactions to my work from different renowned experts in African-American and Theater Studies, both in Germany and in the United States of America. This lack of familiarity with the writings of 20th-century African-American female playwrights is indeed indicative of the general state of the art on this specific field of study. Thus far, the literary tradition of African-American theater by female playwrights has been largely overlooked by both public interest and scholarship. The different scholars to whom I presented my work were surprised by the richness and diversity of this dramatic art, and even the most avid theatergoer can rarely name more than a few plays by black American women playwrights. Whereas narrative texts like Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), Alice Walker’s The Color Purple (1982), and 1 bookmark by Ronald A.