Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers by Taylor Hagood
Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers seeks to rescue the plays of eight black women, Marita Bonner, Mary P. Burrill, Thelma Duncan, Shirley Graham, Zora Neale Hurston, Georgia Douglas Johnson, May Miller, and Eulalie Spence, from obscurity. This volume is the first book-length treatment to address these plays and their authors exclusively rather than as part of a discussion of other African American playwrights from different eras. It is also one of the few to carry out an extensive discussion of secrecy's role in both literary representation and social interaction.
Exploring secrecy from the standpoints of poststructuralist language theory and game theory as well as dramatic performance, Taylor Hagood argues that the secret--a thing visible for its very invisibility--is a fundamental cog in the machinery of society, employed as a tool for both oppression and subversion. The many facets of secrecy have been particularly salient in African American culture, informing everything from the Underground Railroad to the subtle coding of Signifying. Most devastatingly, people on both sides of the color line are caught within a web of secrecy that is the result of centuries of distrust, doubt, and fear, a fact that is powerfully manifest not only in these one-act plays but in the reader's/spectator's interactions with them.
Exploring secrecy from the standpoints of poststructuralist language theory and game theory as well as dramatic performance, Taylor Hagood argues that the secret--a thing visible for its very invisibility--is a fundamental cog in the machinery of society, employed as a tool for both oppression and subversion. The many facets of secrecy have been particularly salient in African American culture, informing everything from the Underground Railroad to the subtle coding of Signifying. Most devastatingly, people on both sides of the color line are caught within a web of secrecy that is the result of centuries of distrust, doubt, and fear, a fact that is powerfully manifest not only in these one-act plays but in the reader's/spectator's interactions with them.
Kirstin L. Squint is associate professor of English at High Point University and holds the Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities at East Carolina University. She is the author of LeAnne Howe at the Intersections of Southern and Native American Literature.
Eric Gary Anderson, associate professor of English at George Mason University, is the author of American Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions. With Taylor Hagood and Daniel Cross Turner, he coedited Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture. Taylor Hagood, professor of American literature at Florida Atlantic University, is the author of Faulkner's Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth and Faulkner, Writer of Disability. Anthony Wilson, associate professor of English at LaGrange College, is the author of Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture and Swamp: Nature and Culture.| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780814255087 |
| ISBN 10 | 0814255086 |
| Title | Secrecy, Magic, and the One-Act Plays of Harlem Renaissance Women Writers |
| Author | Taylor Hagood |
| Series | Black Performance And Cultural Criticism |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Ohio State University Press |
| Year published | 2018-09-01 |
| Number of pages | 216 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |