This stimulating collection of essays, the first comprehensive critical examination of the work of two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson, deals individually with his five major plays and also addresses issues crucial to Wilson's canon: the role of history, the relationship of African ritual to African American drama, gender relations in the African American community, music and cultural identity, the influence of Romare Bearden's collages, and the politics of drama. The collection includes essays by virtually all the scholars who have currently published on Wilson along with many established and newer scholars of drama and/or African American literature.

Alan Nadel is the Bryan Chair of American literature and culture at the University of Kentucky, where he teaches literature and film. He is the editor of May All Your Fences Have Gates(Iowa, 1993) and the author of Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon (Iowa, 1991), Containment Culture: American Narratives, Postmodernism, and the Atomic Age, Flatlining on the Field of Dreams: Cultural Narratives in the Films of President Reagan's America, and Television in Black and White America: Race and National Identity.