Seattle Rep's BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY: Beyond the TheatreLike this list

13 items

• Blues for An Alabama Sky

  Cleage, Pearl

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  The script of BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY, for your reading pleasure.

• Fearless and Free

  a Memoir

  Baker, Josephine, 1906-1975

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  Read about the exceptional life of Josephine Baker to better understand why Guy from BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY dreamed of designing dresses for her in Paris.

• Go Tell It on the Mountain

  Baldwin, James, 1924-1987

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  Baldwin's semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of John, a fourteen-year-old boy whose stepfather is a Pentecostal minister in Harlem in 1935, and his struggles to discover his own identity.

• There Is Confusion

  Fauset, Jessie Redmon

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  Written in 1924 and set in the early 20th century, this novel follows the lives of talented dancer Joanna Marshall and her two childhood friends Peter and Maggie as they navigate life and changes in their relationships to one another.

• Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun

  Hansberry, Lorraine, 1930-1965

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  Hansberry's play explores the complex dynamics of a working-class Black American family living in 1950s Chicago as they disagree on how to spend their late relative's insurance money.

• God's Trombones

  Seven Negro Sermons in Verse

  Johnson, James Weldon, 1871-1938

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  Johnson was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance. This poetry collection draws inspiration from the sermons of old-time African American preachers, a religious movement that had begun to vanish in Johnson's time.

• When Harlem Was in Vogue

  Lewis, David Levering, 1936-

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  This "major study...thoroughly interweaves the philosophies and fads, the people and movements that combined to give a small segment of Afro America a brief place in the sun." (The New York Times Book Review).

• Intimate Apparel

  Fabulation, Or, The Re-education of Undine

  Nottage, Lynn

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  These two companion plays from award-winning playwright Lynn Nottage explore the parallel lives of two Black women in New York City 100 years apart.

• Take My Hand

  Perkins-Valdez, Dolen

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  Nurse Civil Townsend uncovers the heinous acts being committed against her mostly Black patients at a family planning clinic in 1970s Alabama. This story is inspired by the real-life case of forced sterilization of the Relf sisters.

• The Street

  Petry, Ann, 1908-1997

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  Petry's classic novel "explores the life and dreams of a young woman who struggles to raise her son in a suffocating ghetto world of racism, human degradation, and uncontrolled violence." (NoveList).

• Bessie

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  Bessie Smith (played by Queen Latifah in this 2015 biopic) was a prominent jazz and blues vocalist known as the "Empress of Blues." She overcame many obstacles and become one of the most celebrated voices to come out of the Harlem Renaissance.

• The Rough Guide to Blues Divas

  Reborn and Remastered

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  Listen to the magical sounds of Black women blues vocalists of the 1920s including Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith.

• Seattle Rep's BLUES FOR AN ALABAMA SKY webpage

  View on seattlerep.org

  In 1930s New York, the hopes of the Harlem Renaissance have been tempered by the realities of the Great Depression. Best friends and artists Angel and Guy dream of a glamorous future but can barely eke out a living in the jazz clubs, while their…Read moreRead more of this annotation