Alice Childress

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Alice Childress (born October 12, 1920 in Charleston (South Carolina) , † August 14, 1994 in New York City ) was an American playwright, actress and writer.

Childress grew up in Harlem with her grandmother. As a child, she spent a lot of time in the library, where she usually read two books a day. After the death of her mother and grandmother, she had to leave school and worked as a retoucher and insurance agent. From 1943 she worked without having completed any formal training at the American Negro Theater in Harlem as an actress, director and writer. She made a bet with Sidney Poitier that she could write a good drama overnight; this is how her debut Florence was born . She received an Obie Award for her piece Trouble in Mind (1955) . On July 17, 1957, she married the musician and music teacher Nathan Woodard. She had a daughter from a previous marriage.

Outstanding themes in her work are overt and covert racism and sexism , as well as the lives of poor people. In doing so, she portrays stereotyping and mendacity. She also turned to children and young people, for example with the novel Rainbow Jordan and the drama When the Rattlesnake Sounds . She often uses music for this. Alice Childress also took up socio-political, romantic, biographical, historical, mythological and feminist topics. In essays she dealt with the humanistic and political function of a self-determined theater.

It was included in the anthology Daughters of Africa , edited in 1992 by Margaret Busby in London and New York.

Works

  • She belongs entirely to the family ( Like One of the Family: Conversations from a Domestic's Life , 1956; collection of a series of narratives that first appeared in Freedom and Baltimore Afro-American )
Novels
  • A hero is also just a sausage ( A Hero Ain't Nothin 'but a Sandwich 1973; filmed in 1978 by Ralph Nelson )
  • A Short Walk (1979)
  • Many Closets (1987)
  • Rainbow Jordan (1981)
  • Those Other People (1989)
Dramas
  • Florence (1949)
  • Just a Little Simple (1950, after Langston Hughes ' Simple Speaks His Mind )
  • Gold Through the Trees (1952)
  • Trouble in Mind (1955)
  • A Man Bearing A Pitcher (1955)
  • Wedding Band (1966)
  • The World on a Hill (1968)
  • String (1969)
  • Wine in the Wilderness (1969)
  • Mojo (1969)
  • The Freedom Drum (also: Young Martin Luther King , 1969)
  • African Garden (1971)
  • When the Rattlesnake Sounds (1975)
  • Let's Hear It for the Queen (1976)
  • Sea Island Song (1977)
  • Gullah (1984, based on Sea Island Song )
  • Moms (1987; piece about Jackie Mabley )
  • Vashti's Magic Mirror

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Elizabeth Brown-Guilloyr: Childress, Alice . In: William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, Trudier Harris (Eds.): The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature . Oxford University Press, 2001.
  2. ↑ Olga Dugan: Telling the Truth: Alice Childress as Theorist and Playwright . In: The Journal of African American History 87, 2002, pp. 146-159.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Childress, Alice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American playwright, actress, and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Charleston, South Carolina
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1994
Place of death New York City