Philip U. Effiong's IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMA, A Key Source for Understanding Black Theatrical Growth in America

Three major African-American dramatists, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, and Ntozake Shange, are central to the discourse of IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMA. Their theatrical approaches and models provide an important index to understanding the impact of a people's history and experience on the evolution of their drama.

IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMA (published by University Press of America) takes a careful look at the African-American quest for a vital theatrical form. Because the Black experience in America has been unique and severe, there has been a constant definition and redefinition of dramatic standards that would serve to uplift and heal. At the center of this search, Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, and Ntozake Shange emerge as crucial dramatists who represent different models at three different and significant periods of history. Hansberry's integrationist and realistic, though pro Black plays, can be linked to Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s; Baraka's violent ritualistic plays can be linked to the more confrontational Civil Rights efforts of the 1960s; while Shange's feminist and "chorepoem" dramas clearly belong to the 1970s feminist and post Civil Rights era and beyond.

While the search for a dramatic model has engendered the emergence of remarkable talent, it has also, resulted in restrictions that, ironically, have been caused by the same models that are supposed to guarantee artistic freedom. In addition to such self-imposed restrictions, conflicts over prescribed standards have partially neutralized the validity of these models.

In all, while IN SEARCH OF A MODEL examines and celebrates African-American drama, the text also establishes that the oppression of a people invariably leads to an oppression of their art and weighs down heavily on their artistic choices.

(Copies of IN SEARCH OF A MODEL FOR AFRICAN-AMERICAN DRAMA can be found in www.univpress.com, www.amazon.com, and www.borders.com.)