Wines in the wilderness : plays by African American women from the Harlem Renaissance to the present /

This book contains 13 plays by 9 playwrights, with both biographical notes and synopsis and analysis information for each play. Brown-Guillory (University of Houston), who compiled this volume and is herself the author of a play included in this volume, also wrote Their Place on the Stage (CH, Jun'89), which dealt with the plays of six of the dramatists also included in this second book. At present, she is working on a book about Alice Childress, included in both her previous works cited here. Authors Marita Bonner, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eulalie Spence, May Miller, Shirley Graham, Alice Childress, Sonia Sanchez, Sybil Kein, and Brown-Guillory herself may be both representative and important for their contributions, as Brown-Guillory asserts in the preface, but the absence of Hansberry, Shange, and Kennedy suggests the exclusiveness of this collection. The notes are readable and informative as is the 20-page bibliography of published plays, produced plays, anthologies, and critical sources for further reading. This volume would be useful for enlarging awareness of the artistic contributions made to American theater by African-American women writers. D. S. Isaacs Fordham University