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Overview
A revealing collection of words, memories and pictures-an autobiographical scrapbook—by an outstanding contemporary playwright.
Synopsis
A revealing collection of words, memories and pictures-an autobiographical scrapbook—by an outstanding contemporary playwright.
Publishers Weekly
As the bittersweet recollections of a young black growing up in Ohio in the 1940s, aspiring to be a famous writer, this scrapbook suffers from its deliberately fragmented format. Kennedy, whose Funnyhouse of a Negro won a 1964 Obie Award, seems to be adapting here the nonlinear style of her avant-garde plays. Hundreds of very short, titled entries (``Junior High,'' ``My Father,'' ``Paul Robeson,'' ``Frank Sinatra'') add up to a jumbled self-portrait of a writer slowly finding her direction. She also presents a compendium of creative artists, famous people, friends and relatives who in any way influenced her work. We get scores of brief entries on Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Beethoven, Richard Wright, Jackson Pollock, Chopin, Duke Ellington, Socrates and dozens more. Readers with an abiding interest in Kennedy's dramatic output may find this encyclopedic approach worth the effort. (June)