The Piano Lesson Paperback - 1990
by August Wilson
Set in 1936, The Piano Lesson is a powerful new play from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. A sister and brother fight over a piano that has been in the family for three generations, creating a remarkable drama that embodies the painful past and expectant future of black Americans.
Summary
August Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson, Wilson has fashioned his most haunting and dramatic work yet.
At the heart of the play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.
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Details
- Title The Piano Lesson
- Author August Wilson
- Binding Paperback
- Edition [ Edition: Repri
- Pages 144
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher Plume Books, New York, New York, U.S.A.
- Publication date 1990-12-01
- ISBN 9780452265349 / 0452265347
- Weight 0.3 lbs (0.14 kg)
- Dimensions 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.4 in (20.07 x 13.21 x 1.02 cm)
- Age range 18 to UP years
- Grade levels 13 - UP
-
Themes
- Catalog Heading: Language Arts/Literature
- Curriculum Strand: Language Arts/Literature
- Ethnic Orientation: African American
- Category Plays / Drama
- Library of Congress subjects Drama, African American families
- Library of Congress Catalogue Number 90038735
- Dewey Decimal Code 812.54
Media reviews
Citations
- Ebony, 11/01/2005, Page 44
About the author
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