Contemporary African American Female Playwrights

Though Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) raised the world's awareness of the abilities of African American female playwrights, both the theater and the literary world often have neglected to include contemporary African American women dramatists within the circle of production, publication, and criticism. This reference book sheds light on the achievement of these playwrights and directs researchers to studies of their works. The first section includes a selected listing of anthologies that contain one or more plays by an African American female dramatist who has published at least one play since 1959. The second provides entries for reference works and for general and scholarly criticism about the dramatists and their plays. The third gives a selected listing of individual dramatists' published plays, with summaries of each drama; the dramatists' primary works related to drama; and secondary works that treat the dramatists and their plays. Entries are accompanied by concise yet informative annotations. The volume closes with a selected listing of periodicals that typically publish criticism of African American female playwrights, brief biographical sketches of the dramatists, and extensive indexes.