Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890-1930

[...]American theater was becom- ing an increasingly popular mode of entertainment rife with negative depictions of African Americans. [...]black playwrights used lynching drama to fash- ion a communal theater for the collective expression of black subjectivity and self- representation, at once addr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:MELUS 2014, Vol.39 (2), p.247-249
Main Author: McInnis, Jarvis C.
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
African Americans
Citizenship
Drama
Dramatists
Johnson, Georgia Douglas
Lynchings
Men
Racial violence
Racism
Reviews
Spouses
Subjectivity
Theater
Young, Kevin
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Summary:[...]American theater was becom- ing an increasingly popular mode of entertainment rife with negative depictions of African Americans. [...]black playwrights used lynching drama to fash- ion a communal theater for the collective expression of black subjectivity and self- representation, at once addressing the violent theatricality of lynching and racist caricatures on the American stage. [...]she contends that lynching play- wrights used the mother/wife figure to examine how black women secretly bore the abuses of white sexual violence for fear that their sons and husbands would retaliate and become casualties of white violence themselves.
ISSN:0163-755X
1946-3170
DOI:10.1093/melus/mlu011