Three Pieces: Spell #7, A Photograph: Lovers in Motion, Boogie Woogie Landscapes.
New York: St Martin's Press, 1981. First Printing of the First US Edition. A Fine copy in a Near Fine unclipped dust jacket with light toning to the extremities. Playwrite and poet Shange offers three impressive new verse plays which often seem better suited to the page than the stage. Even in a photograph, the most traditionally structured of the three, lengthy poetry-monologues dominate; and, in all of the pieces, characters function chiefly as brief, spectral-voiced embodiments of black strength and black pain. Best of all is spell #7, in which Shange explores the history of the paradoxical role of the black performer in American show business--the vices of exploitation and stereotyping vs. the virtues of opportunity and public visibility--with an anti-white anger that's offset by wit and vulnerability. Item #26775
Price: $45.00