AUGUST WILSON'S AMERICAN CENTURY

A biography of one of America’s greatest playwrights.

His original plan was to become a poet, writing about the people he saw every day at Eddie’s Diner in the Hill District of his hometown of Pittsburgh. August Wilson would become instead one of America’s most celebrated playwrights with what Glasco calls his unprecedented achievement: the Pittsburgh Cycle of 10 plays, each one set in a different decade of the 20th century. As the professor emeritus of history at the University of Pittsburgh writes, “No other playwright—certainly none in the United States—has written a comparable set of excellent plays set in the same place and treating a common topic over an extended period of time,” plays that “gave dignity and respect to the lives of Pittsburgh’s working-class Black residents.” In this admiring biography, Glasco draws from Wilson’s personal papers and interviews with people who knew him to explore “how Pittsburgh influenced both Wilson’s identity and his accomplishments.” He charts Wilson’s path, from his exposure to racism from a young age when his mother won a new washing machine in a radio contest, only for the station to offer her “a used washing machine from the Salvation Army” when they learned she was Black; to his co-founding of Pittsburgh’s Black Horizons Theatre, where he and his colleagues sought Black plays that were “revolutionary and progressive”; to the ways in which he incorporated early experiences into works such as Two Trains Running and Seven Guitars. Another strong influence was artist Romare Bearden, whose collages “changed the way Wilson would write about Black life.” Glasco sometimes gets bogged down in details, as when he describes the maroon wallpaper Wilson’s mother used to make the living room look nicer. But this is a well-written biography that will persuade Wilson’s admirers to revisit his plays and introduce his work to a new generation of fans.

Welcome appreciation for a seminal figure in American theater.