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A Journal for Adrienne Kennedy (after People Who Led to My Plays)
Ist Teil von
Modern drama, 2012-03, Vol.55 (1), p.55-69
Ort / Verlag
Toronto: Graduate Centre for Study of Drama
Erscheinungsjahr
2012
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
Project MUSE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
To make oneself an artist is difficult in any society. But when your society's cultural traditions actively discourage and devalue you, the challenge is enormous and the emotional cost is great. Adrienne Kennedy wanted to be a major writer at a time when America's literary culture took little or no interest in African-American writers of either sex or in women of any race. This essay explores the strategies Kennedy used to make herself into an original and important writer. She refused to turn her back on cultures and canons that ignored or belittled her. She took a passionate, even voracious interest in multiple traditions: English literature; American movies; classical music, spirituals, and jazz; European painting and African sculpture. She created her own artistic and personal legacies, writing stories and plays that brought these divergent genres and traditions into the same imaginative space. She explored the emotional cost without being silenced by it. In the process, she created new literary worlds and forms.