Présentation de l'éditeur
Award-winning writer Ntozake Shange and real-life sister, award-winning playwright Ifa Bayeza achieve nothing less than a modern classic in this epic story of the Mayfield family.
Opening dramatically at Sweet Tamarind, a rice and cotton plantation on an island off South Carolina's coast, we watch as recently emancipated Bette Mayfield says her goodbyes before fleeing for the mainland. With her granddaughter, Eudora, in tow, she heads to Charleston. There, they carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Dora will marry, the Mayfield line will grow, and we will follow them on an journey through the watershed events of America's troubled, vibrant history--from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day.
Shange and Bayeza give us a monumental story of a family and of America, of songs and why we have to sing them, of home and of heartbreak, of the past and of the future, bright and blazing ahead.
Biographie de l'auteur
Ntozake Shange was born in Trenton, New Jersey and educated at Barnard College and the University of Southern California, where she received an MA in American Studies. Her choreopoem
for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf brought her Broadway success and international recognition. She is the author of an acclaimed adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's
Mother Courage and Her Children and has written three novels:
Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo;
Betsey Brown; and
Liliane. Her poetry includes
nappy edges,
A Daughter's Geography,
Ridin' the Moon in Texas and
From Okra to Greens. Her first collection of plays was published by Methuen Drama in 1978.
Ifa Bayeza is an award-winning playwright, producer, and conceptual theater artist. Her works for the stage include
Amistad Voices,
Club Harlem,
Kid Zero,
Homer G & the Rhapsodies, and
The Ballad of Emmett Till, winner of the 2008 Edgar Award for Best Play and a 2007 Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference fellowship. A graduate of Harvard University, Bayeza is a board member of the SonEdna Literary Foundation. She lives in Chicago.
