Zora Neale Hurston, Eulalie Spence, Marita Bonner, and others : the prize plays and other one-acts published in periodicals /

This collection is part of the series "African American Women Writers, 1910-1940," which is designed to coordinate with the Schomburg series on 19th-century African American women writers. Burton's selections cover one-act plays written between 1913 and 1932 and represent the works of 12 playwrights. Although she includes writers and works anthologized in recent collections, she introduces both "new" plays by authors such as May Miller and Eulalie Spence and works by "new" playwrights such as Ottie Beatrice Graham and Doris Price. Her informative introduction contextualizes the relegation of black women dramatists to one-acts following the production of Angelina Grimke's Rachel (1920), the play that established the commercial arena for "race" drama, thereafter dominated by productions by white and black men. Black women playwrights turned to contests sponsored by periodicals, transforming the one-act into a new genre of "plays to be read," thus shifting their focus from performances to publication; notable innovations are experimental form (Bonner, Hurston) and antireligious sentiment (Hirsch, Burrill). Burton's chronological arrangement plots a movement away from propaganda and folk plays toward drama identifying black characters with "problems that are not particularly racial," introducing such "contemporary" topics as addiction and emotional abandonment. The extensive bibliography provides a valuable source for further research. Recommended for all general and academic collections. A. J. Gosselin Cleveland State University