"
Block I Illinois Library Illinois Open Publishing Network

Bibliography

Alexander, M. The New Jim Crow. The New Press, 2010.

Anderson, Victor. “Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology.” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 32, no. 3 (2011): 268–71.

Barrios, Olga. “From Seeking One’s Voice to Uttering the Scream: The Pioneering Journey of African American Women Playwrights through the 1960s and 1970s.” African American Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 611–28.

Baum, Robert Craig, and Harry J. Elam. “Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays by Harry J. Elam, Jr., Robert Alexander.” African American Review 31, no. 4 (1997): 732–35. https://doi.org/10.2307/3042346.

Beal, Frances M. “Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female.” In The Black Woman: An Anthology, edited by Toni Cade Bambara. Washington Square Press, 2010. Originally published 1970.

Bösch, Susanna A. “Sturdy Black Bridges” on the American State: The Portrayal of Black Motherhood. P. Lang Publisher, 1996.

Boulware, Jan, Rondrea Mathis, Kideste Yusef, and Clarissa West-White, eds. Mamas, Martyrs, and Jezebels: Myths, Legends, and Other Lies You’ve Been Told about Black Women. Black Lawrence Press, 2024.

Brown, Rebecca. “Disquieting ‘Monster’: Dael Orlandersmith Will Kick Your Butt All Over Town.” The Stranger, January 25, 2001.

Brown Guillory, Elizabeth, ed. Women of Color: Mother-Daughter Relationships in 20th Century Literature. University of Texas Press, 1996.

Cantillon, Sara, and Martina Hutton. “Exploring Self-Sacrifice, Role Captivity, and Motherhood.” In Mothering and Welfare: Depriving, Surviving, Thriving, edited by Karine Levasseur, Stephanie Paterson, and Lorna A. Turnbull. Demeter Press, 2020.

Catanese, Brandi Wilkins. “‘We Must Keep on Writing’: The Plays of Aishah Rahman.” In Contemporary African American Women Playwrights: A Casebook, edited by Philip C. Kolin. University of Southern Mississippi, 2007.

Cole, Johnetta Betsch, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall. Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in African American Communities. Ballantine Books, 2003.

Coleman, Chris. “On Beating the Odds: An Interview with the Playwright.” American Theatre 16, no. 7 (1999): 32.

Cooper, Anna Julia. A Voice from the South. Aldine Printing House, 1892. Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.docsouth.unc.edu/church/cooper/cooper.html.

Corthron, Kia. Cage Rhythm. In Moon Marked and Touched by Sun, edited by Sydné Mahone. Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

Davis, Angela Y. “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism.” In The Angela Y. Davis Reader, edited by Joy James. Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. Vintage, 1983.

Davis, Thulani. X. In Moon Marked and Touched by Sun, edited by Sydné Mahone, Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

Delgado, Ramon Ray. “Velina Hasu Houston Has Been Carving Out Her Space Since She Was a Girl.” USC Today, May 1, 2023.

Demetrakopoulos, Stephanie A. “Maternal Bonds as Devourers of Woman’s Individuation in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” African American Review 26, no. 1 (1992): 51–59.

Dickerson, Glenda. “The Cult of True Womanhood: Towards a Womanist Attitude in African-American Theatre.” In Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, edited by Sue Ellen Case. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.

Du Bois, Shirley Graham. It’s Morning. In Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950, edited by Kathy A. Perkins. Indiana University Press, 1990.

Edwards, Arlene E. “Community Mothering: The Relationship Between Mothering and the Community Work of Black Women.” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement 2, no. 2 (2000): 87–100.

Feldman, Adam. “Suzan-Lori Parks Talks About Politics, Inspiration, James Baldwin and Her Red Letter Plays.” Time Out, August 22, 2017. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/theater/suzan-lori-parks-talks-poiitics-inspiration-james-baldwin-and-the-red-letter-plays.

Fisher, Lucy. “The Reproduction of Mothering: Masculinity, Adoption, and Identity in Flirting with Disaster.” In A Companion to Film Comedy, edited by Andrew Horton and Joanna E. Rapf, Wiley-Blackwell. 2012.

Flynn, Richard. “The Kindergarten of New Consciousness: Gwendolyn Brooks and the Social Construction of Childhood.” African American Review 34, no. 3 (2000): 483–500.

Fraden, Rena. “Suzan-Lori Parks’ Hester Plays: In the Blood and Fucking A.The Massachusetts Review 48, no. 3 (2007): 434–54.

Garfield, Gail. Knowing What We Know: African American Women’s Experiences of Violence and Violation. Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Gilkes, C. A. Townsend. “The Role of Women in the Sanctified Church.” The Journal of Religious Thought 43, no. 1 (1975): 24–41.

Gilkes, C. A. Townsend. “Going Up for the Oppressed: Career Mobility of Black Women Community Workers.” Journal of Social Issues 39, no. 3 (1983): 115–39.

Hale, Janice. “The Black Woman and Childrearing.” In The Black Woman, edited by LaFrances Rodgers-Rose. Sage Publications, 1980.

Hamilton, Virginia, Leo Dillon, Diane Dillon. The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales. Knopf, 1985.

Hampton, Wilborn. “Growing Up Talented in Harlem: Poet’s Tour.” The New York Times, February 7, 1995.

Hancock, Ange-Marie. The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. NYU Press, 2004.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Random House, 1959.

Harrison, Paul Carter. “Form and Transformation: Immanence of the Soul in the Performance Modes of Black Church and Black Music.” In Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora, edited by Paul Carter Harrison, Victor Leo Walker II, and Gus Edwards. Temple University Press, 1990.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance. Dover, 1994. Originally published by Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1850.

Hay, Samuel A. African American Theatre: An Historical and Critical Analysis. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Height, Dorothy. “Family and Community: Self-Help—A Black Tradition.” The Nation 249, no. 4 (1989): 136–38.

Herland, Mari Dalen. “Conceptualizing Motherhood in a Context of Inequality and Vulnerability: Experiences of Being a Mother After a Troubled Upbringing.” Qualitative Social Work 19 (2000): 934–50.

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. 2nd ed. Routledge, 2000.

Hill Collins, Patricia. “Learning from the Outsider Within: The Sociological Significance of Black Feminist Thought.” Social Problems 33, no. 6 (1986): 514–32.

Hinton, Anna. “Making Do with What You Don’t Have: Disabled Black Motherhood in Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents.” Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies 12, (2018): 441–57.

hooks, bell. “Feminism: A Transformational Politic.” In Race, Class, and Gender in the United States, 5th ed., edited by Paula S. Rothenberg. Worth Publishers, 2001.

Houston, Velina Hasu. Alabama Rain. In Black Drama. Alexander Street Press, 1994.

Houston, Velina Hasu. “Biography.” https://www.velinahasuhouston.com/biography.html.

Houston, Velina Hasu, ed. The Politics of Life: Four Plays of Asian American Women. Temple University Press, 1993.

Houston, Velina Hasu.. “Rising Sun, Rising Soul: On Mixed Race Asian Identity That Includes Blackness.” In Red and Yellow, Black and Brown: Decentering Whiteness in Mixed Race Studies, edited by Joanne L. Rondilla et al. Rutgers University Press, 2017.

Hurston, Zora Neale. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Perennial Classics, 1990. Originally published 1937.

James, S. M. “Mothering: A Possible Black Feminist Link to Social Transformation.” In Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women, edited by S. M. James and A. A. Busia. Routledge, 1993.

Jennings, LaVinia Delois. “Segregated Sisterhood: Anger, Racism, and Feminism in Alice Childress’s Florence and Wedding Band.” In Black Women Playwrights: Visions on the American Stage, edited by Carol P. Marsh-Lockett. Garland Publishing, 1999.

Johnson, Georgia Douglas. Blue Blood. In Black Female Playwrights: An Anthology of Plays Before 1950, edited by Kathy A. Perkins. Indiana University Press, 1990.

Johnson, Jessica Marie. Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020.

Jones, Rhodessa. “Big Butt Girls, Hard-Headed Women.” In Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Plays, edited by Harry J. Elam Jr. and Robert Alexander. Penguin Group, 1996.

Kim, Jina B. “Cripping the Welfare Queen: The Radical Potential of Disability Politics.” Social Text 39, no. 3 (2021): 79. https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-9034390.

Kosidowski, Paul. “Review: ‘The Mojo and the Sayso.'” Milwaukee Magazine, (Jan. 29, 2016). https://www.milwaukeemag.com/review-the-mojo-and-the-sayso-milwaukee-rep.

Kuo, Ming-ming Shen. Review of Beauty’s Daughter, Monster, The Gimmick: Three Plays, by Dael Orlandersmith. Library Journal 125, no. 18: (2000): 80.

Lincoln, C. Eric, and Lawrence H. Mamiya. The Black Church in the African American Experience. Duke University Press, 1990.

Mahone, Sydné. “Introduction.” In Moon Marked and Touched by Sun. Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

Marks, Peter. “Her Crime? Daring to be Different.” The New York Times, December 18, 1996.

McDaniels, Preselfannie Whitfield. “Mothering Modes: Analyzing Mother Roles in Novels by Twentieth-Century United States Women Writers.” PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 2004.

Meier, Joyce A. “The Refusal of Motherhood in African American Women’s Theater.” MELUS 25, no. 3/4 (2000): 117–39.

Michel, Sonya A., and Suzanna Danuta Walters. “Lives Together/Worlds Apart: Mothers and Daughters in Popular Culture.” The American Historical Review 99 (1994): 679.

Miller, Arthur. “Tragedy and the Common Man.” The New York Times, February 27, 1949.

Miller, Jeanne-Marie A. “Georgia Douglas Johnson and May Miller: Forgotten Playwrights of the New Negro Renaissance.” CLA Journal 33, no. 4 (1990): 349–66.

Miller, Stuart. “The Education of Dael Orlandersmith: At a Turning Point in Her Career, a Poet-Turned-Playwright Is Still Learning from Her Past.” American Theatre 19, no. 6 (2002): 26.

“Motherhood.” Dictionary.com. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/motherhood.

Nouryeh, Andrea J. “Mojo and the Sayso: A Drama of Nommo That Asks, ‘Is Your Mojo Working?’” In Black Theatre: Ritual Performance in the African Diaspora, edited by Paul Carter Harrison, Victor Leo Walker II, and Gus Edwards. Temple University Press, 1990.

Orlandersmith, Dael. Beauty’s Daughter, Monster, The Gimmick: Three Plays. Vintage Books, 2000.

Omolade, Barbara, and Linda Carty. “The rising song of African American women.” Resources for Feminist Research 25, no. 1/2 (1996).

Parks, Suzan-Lori. The Red Letter Plays. Theatre Communications Group, 2001.

Rahman, Aishah. The Mojo and the Sayso. In Moon Marked and Touched by Sun, edited by Sydné Mahone. Theatre Communications Group, 1994.

Rahman, Aishah. “Tradition and a New Aesthetic.” MELUS 16, no. 3 (1989): 23–26. https://doi.org/10.2307/467561.

Rahman, Aishah. “Aishah Rahman: Literary Arts Program,” Brown University, https://www.brown.edu/academics/literary-arts/ about/faculty/aishah-rahman/aishah-rahman.

Reagon, Bernice J. “African Diaspora Women: The Making of Cultural Carriers.” In Women in Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Rosalind Terborg-Penn, Sharon Harley, and Althea Benton Rushing. Howard University Press, 1987.

Roebuck Sakho, Jacqueline. “Black Activist Mothering: Teach Me about What Teaches You.” Western Journal of Black Studies 41, no. 1 (2017): 6–19.

Russo, Ann. “Exploring AIDS in the Black Community.” Sojourner: The Women’s Forum 15, no. 1 (September 1989): 38.

Ryan, Katy. “‘No Less Human’: Making History in Suzan-Lori Parks’ The America Play.” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 13 (1999): 81–94.

Schafer, Carol. “Staging a New Literary History: Suzan- Lori Parks’ Venus, In the Blood, and Fucking A.” Comparative Drama 42, no. 2 (2008): 181–203.

Shange, Ntozake. For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf. Macmillan, 1977.

Stephens, Judith L. “Art, activism, and uncompromising attitude in Georgia Douglas Johnson’s lynching plays.” African American Review 39, no. 1/2 (2005): 87-102.

Stone-Mediatore, Shari. “Women’s Rights and Cultural Differences.” Studies in Practical Philosophy 4, no. 2 (2004): 111–33.

Thierry, Jordan. “Interview with Dael Orlandersmith.” February 26, 2010. Posted by blackfatherhood. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTWQN8KhU0Y.

Tobin, Theresa. “Using Rights to Counter ‘Gender-Specific’ Wrongs.” Human Rights Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 521–30.

Wattley, Ama. “Barriers to Connecting: Black Sexual Politics in Aishah Rahman’s The Lady and the Tramp. Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora 1, no. 1 (1999).

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” American Quarterly 18, no. 2, Part I (1966): 151–74.

West, Cheryl L. Before It Hits Home. Dramatists Play Service, 1993.

Wetmore, Kevin J. Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre. McFarland & Company, 2003.

Wilkerson, Margaret B., ed. 9 Plays by Black Women. New American Library, 1986.

Williams, Rhaisa Kameela. “Toward a Theorization of Black Maternal Grief as Analytic.” Transforming Anthropology 24 (2016): 17–30.

Winer, Linda. “Women in Theatre: Dael Orlandersmith.” June 6, 2011. Posted by CUNY TV. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UucHAjDs9Y.

Wyatt, Jean. “Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Sexual Politics and the Genealogy of the Strong Black Woman.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 9, no. 1 (2008): 52–67.

Yearley, Carole. “Motherhood as a Rite of Passage: An Anthropological Perspective.” In Midwifery Practice: Core Topics 2: Birth, edited by Jo Alexander, Valerie Levy, and Carolyn Roth. Bloomsbury Academic, 1997.

License

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

The Motherhood Aesthetic in Contemporary Black American Plays Copyright © 2025 by La Tanya L. Reese Rogers and Tanya E. Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.