Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun Baldwin's Amen Corner

Last week, one of our class colleagues asked when, if ever, the subjects we have discussed in relationship to African American Theater would change? I think this was a prolific inquiry and one that we must grapple with when examining the works of Hansberry and Baldwin. What is "new" in the discussions of African American life we see presented in these works? How to they present new perspectives or subversive characteristics which address issues of racism and insitutionalized inequality for African Americans? What stories and/or stereotypes persist?

Angelina Weld Grimke's Rachel Langston Hughes' Mulatto

Our reading of Angelina Grimke's Rachel and Langston Hughes' Mulatto engendered several discussions about the multiple ways that "blackness" can be written for the stage. Particularly, both playwrights use language as a way to indicate the level of "blackness" lived by their characters. For example, both Grimke and Hughes use speech that is presented as "educated"and "uneducated" to create chracterizations of light skinned and dark skinned blacks respectively.

Keeping this in mind, how do Both Grimke and Hughes use language and color to differentiate the ways in which black Americans of various skin tones are afforded or denied certain privleges according to their phenotypical relationship to whiteness? In what ways to Grimke and Hughes begin to solicit a conversation about black identity as a simultaneous racial, social and poltical identification? Conversley, is Hughes successful at writing "whiteness" in Mulatto?