Joe Turner's come and gone A play in two acts

August Wilson

Book - 1988

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812.54/Wilson
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Subjects
Published
New York, NY : New American Library c1988.
Language
English
Main Author
August Wilson (-)
Physical Description
94 p.
ISBN
9780452260092
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Wilson intends to produce a dramatic cycle on the black American experience of the twentieth century. The third play to be published-- the first two are Ma Rainey's Black Bottom [BKL Je 1 85] and Fences [BKL S 1 86]-- is set in a black boardinghouse in Pittsburgh in 1911. It is full of vivid characters, at some cost to dramatic focus upon its mysterious, brooding central figure, Herald Loomis, a man struggling to rebuild his life. Abducted into forced labor on a cotton plantation 10 years ago, Herald has spent the last several looking for his wife. His arrival at the boardinghouse, with his young daughter in tow, precipitates among the residents a conflict between ancient folk spirituality and modern, ``civilized'' manners; then he interrupts their Saturday night juba dancing with a visionary seizure. Although the play seems more dependent for keenest appreciation upon actual staging than the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences, it is as full of the musical language with which Wilson has catapulted himself into the front rank of American playwrights. RO.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.