87 pages • 2 hours read
August WilsonA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
James Truslow Adams coined the phrase “American Dream” in 1931 to describe the ethos of the country as promised and shaped by its founding documents. The Dream, which is at the core of American exceptionalism, promises that “each man and woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position” (Wills, Matthew. “James Truslow Adams: Dreaming up the American Dream.” JSTOR Daily, 2015). And of all possible signifiers of this “fullest stature,” the most sought-after manifestation of the American Dream was home and land ownership. But Black Americans have been systematically excluded from equal pursuit of the American Dream, a theme that resurfaces over and over in August Wilson’s Century Cycle. When slavery was abolished by the 13th amendment in 1865, newly freed Black Americans not only had little or nothing materially, but generations of enslavement had severed and distanced them from their familial inheritances and cultural roots. Attempts by Black Americans to pursue the American Dream were riddled with barriers and traps that would land them in the penal system, which was the new iteration of legal slavery.
By August Wilson
Fences
August Wilson
Gem of the Ocean
August Wilson
Joe Turner's Come and Gone
August Wilson
King Hedley II
August Wilson
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
August Wilson
Seven Guitars
August Wilson
Two Trains Running
August Wilson