Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works

The first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for drama, Suzan-Lori Parks has received international recognition for her provocative and influential works. Her plays capture the nightmares of African Americans endangered by a white establishment determined to erase their history and eradicate their dreams. A dozen essays address Parks's plays, screenplays and novel. Additionally, this book includes two original interviews (one with Parks and another with her long-time director Liz Diamond) and a production chronology of her plays.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Preface      Puck’s Magic Mojo: The Achievements of Suzan-Lori Parks      PHILIP C. KOLIN Everything and Nothing: The Political and Religious Nature of Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Radical Inclusion”      RENA FRADEN “Jazzing” Time, Love, and the Female Self in Three Early Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks      JACQUELINE WOOD “You one of uh mines?” Dis(re)membering in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom      PHILIP C. KOLIN Sampling and Remixing: Hip Hop and Parks’s History Plays      NICOLE HODGES PERSLEY “For the Love of the Venus”: Suzan-Lori Parks, Richard Foreman, and the Premiere of Venus      SHAWN-MARIE GARRETT “A Full Refund Aint Enough”: Money in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Red Letter Plays      JON DIETRICK Does Reshuffling the Cards Change the Game? Structures of Play in Parks’s Topdog/Underdog      JOCHEN ACHILLES Suzan-Lori Parks’s 365 Days/365 Plays: A (W)hole New Approach to Theatre      JENNIFER LARSON Parks and the Traumas of Childhood      CHRISTINE WOODWORTH Demeter, Persephone and Willa Mae Beede: Suzan-Lori Parks Gets Mother’s Body      GLENDA DICKER/SUN The Unconscious and Metaphors in Suzan-Lori Parks’s Screenplays of Girl 6 and Their Eyes Were Watching God      CHARLENE REGESTER An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks      SHAWN-MARIE GARRETT A Parks Remix: An Interview with Liz Diamond      FAEDRA CHATARD CARPENTER A Production History of the Works of Suzan-Lori Parks      RICHARD E. KRAMER About the Contributors      Index     

About the Author :
Philip C. Kolin is the University Distinguished Professor in the College of Arts and Letters at the University of Southern Mississippi, where he teaches classes in American drama and Shakespeare. He has published more than 40 books and 200 articles.

Review :
“a comprehensive panoramic view of Park’s ongoing artistic journey. When you finish the book, you’ll feel as though you’ve been personally introduced to the writer over a long, leisurely dinner and a few glasses of good wine...and that you’ve heard her sing her life, her art and her love of God, the inner guide for whom she writes”—American Theatre; “this collection is wide-ranging, informative, and accessible, especially when it come to Parks’s rather daunting early plays”—Project Muse; “conveys the importance of women playwrights from a range of cultural backgrounds, adding not only to our fundamental understanding of the struggles of marginalized and overlooked peoples but also to our comprehension of the complex experiences of American women today”—Contemporary Women’s Writing; “this critical anthology offers the most comprehensive approach to the works of Suzan-Lori Parks’ work to date...consider[s] the eclectic and prolific Parks with careful detail and fresh insight…this is indeed an important new study.”—Harry J. Elam, Jr., Stanford University; “Parks emerges from these pages as the national mythmaker, the unbounded intellect, and the fearless visionary she is.”—Una Chaudhuri, New York University; “A most effective presentation of the depth, breadth, and diversity of Parks’s writings…one of America’s most influential playwrights of this century.”—Sandra G. Shannon, Howard University.