AugustWilson.net
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
Restoring a Personal Mythology
By Michael Downing
October 1, 2003
"The one thing we did not have as black Americans was a mythology. . . ."
---August Wilson
In his book, Figures in Black: Words, Signs, and the "Racial" Self,
Henry Louis
Gates, Jr. develops his notion of the role of the black poet as cultural
mythmaker. Gates begins by reaching into the past and comparing the role of the
black poet to the role of the black musician in African-American culture. In
Chapter Six, "Dis and Dat: Dialect and the Descent," Gates argues:
"It has been
the traditional role of the black poet . . . to be the point of consciousness,
or superconsciousness, of his or her people. It is the black poet who bridges
the gap in tradition, who modifies tradition when experience demands it, who
translates experience into meaning and meaning into belief. The poet . . .
through the process of translating meaning into belief, has had to serve a
mythopoeic function, a function of incorporating experience into a people's
pantheon of value, a process more integral to the stability of society than
would be of incorporating experience into belief" (176).
Throughout each of his plays, African American playwright August Wilson
consistently fulfills this role. By incorporating the day-to-day experiences of
African Americans into a literary "pantheon of value," Wilson stands as a "point
of consciousness." It's important to note that, in several
interviews--including his interview with Bill Moyers--Wilson has asserted the
importance of knowing one's past as a key to understanding one's present. He claims
that anyone who does not know his or her past is lost and therefore will be
unable to consciously lay claim to the future. Personally for Wilson, understanding the
realities of his own past leads him toward moving beyond the pain of those
realities, toward celebrating the power of the present, and subsequently toward
the willful creation of a sacred future. This attitude carries into his plays.
In order to fully appreciate Wilson's process of converting stereotype to
archetype, it is important to understand how Wilson has mythically reconstructed
his personal past. Born Frederick August Kittel in Pittsburgh's Hill District in
1945, Wilson was raised by his mother, Daisy Wilson, and stepfather, David
Bedford. By the age of sixteen, Wilson had dropped out of high school. Abandoned
by his natural father and living as a young black man without a high school
diploma (at one point being accused of plagiarism), Wilson persevered, writing his poetry and working with Rob Penny to
found the Black Horizons Theater. He eventually changed his last name from
Kittel to Wilson, and this marks his first re-inscription, a recognition that an
alteration in language was the first step to altering reality. Wilson was
also able to re-inscribe his educational experience, replacing the biases he
encountered in high school with hands-on personal experience.
According to August Wilson himself, his literary project is to chronicle the
experience of African Americans living in the United States during the 20th
Century, and constructing a mythology is an integral ingredient in this process.
In an interview entitled, "Blues, History, and Dramaturgy: An Interview with
August Wilson," conducted by contemporary scholar and critic Sandra Shannon,
Wilson asserts his desire to:
"keep all of the elements of the culture alive in my work, and myth is certainly part of it. Mythology, history, social organizations, economics--all of these things are part of the culture. I make sure that each element is in some way represented--some elements more so than others--in the plays, which I think gives them a fullness and completeness, creates the impression that this is an entire world" ("Blues" 539).
To cite this page:
Downing, Michael. "Chapter One: Introduction." AugustWilson.net. Date of Publication. Today's Date. URL.
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