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https://books.google.com/books?id=1H5ACwAAQBAJ&pg=PT163&lpg=PT163&dq=gayle+austin+black+woman+as+feminist+critic&source=bl&ots=g8BMj4k-ST&sig=ACfU3U3orN8wXNewBxRm5QfBaPHOt-SbJA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEoeb448flAhXSmq0KHaRlAo8Q6AEwBXoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=gayle%20austin%20black%20woman%20as%20feminist%20critic&f=false


- [ ] Negro playwrights in the American theatre, 1925-1959 (p188) (leo, arabella)
https://search.library.wisc.edu/search/catalog?match=All&identifiers=00006324

> Yet some critics criticized the play for those very aspects. Doris E. Abramson, in her book Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre 1925-59, finds much to praise about the play, but she also argues ‘‘Trouble in Mind has interesting characters and dialogue, though both tend to ring false whenever they are saturated with sermonizing.’’ Other critics find the plot of the play to be rather thin. Abramson also faults Childress on several other fronts. She writes, ‘‘A reader of the script is very much aware of the author pulling strings, putting her own words into a number of mouths. This is not, however, to deny the theatrical effectiveness of the play in production.’’ Later in the book, Abramson argues that ‘‘It would be better if she did not assault race prejudice at every turn, for she sometimes sacrifices depth of character in the process.’’ Not all critics agree with Abramson’s criticisms.

Followed by a summary of his interpretation of the play, Abramson starts to critically evaluate the sermonizing aspect of the play. He argued that many lines ins the play appear to be just Alice Childress wrapping her own voice about racial around the characters. 


- [ ] Foothills: Precursors of Feminist Drama arabella
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-17681-6_2
> While Trouble in Mind is most immediately a black social protest play whose context and inspiration is the racial integration movement of the fifties, it is also a play about roles in which female stereotypes are acknowledged and jarred.

In his book "Feminist Theatre", Helene Keyssar praised Alice Childress as one of the precursors of feminist drama. He argued Trouble in Mind is not only a play about the struggle of the black, but also challenge the stereotypical notions of powerlessness on women both inside, and outside the theater.


- [ ] Alice Childress: "Black Woman Playwright as Feminist Critic" leo
Requested through librarian

> Childress, in writing the roles of Wiletta and Millie, has provided some alternative images of black women, three dimensional characters with weaknesses and strengths.


- [ ] Telling the truth @leo
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2717612.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A85d4d230766220b18b2a63b6e3eff81b

>...these heroines act on an inner compulsion to resist the racist and sexist assumptions that un- derpin forms of discrimination from institutionalized Jim Crow laws to Bill's "STATEMENT" - a false image of black womanhood ...

>...out a black actress's struggle for crea- tive autonomy in the predominantly white Broadway t

> In the same vein, Gayle Austin, Helene Keyssar, an theme as ideological structures of a feminist premi
drama. They include Childress's plays among those of women dramatists from the United States and Europe in studies that reveal a dialogue on the "political poetics" of women's drama.6

> Childress linked the meaning of black theatre with the great need to represent African-Americans on the stage in images and through stories that vindicate their collective and individual identit
> But more importantly, black women's self-determination extends to de- fining "black me" and embracing the responsibilities associated with the freedom of finally coming into their own.

Circle around Alice Childress's theorem of self-determination, argue that the heroic figure Alice created reflected the individual's struggle for "creative autonomy"  


- [ ] 100th anniversary Arabella @arabella
> But, she also tapped into, and this is true of most of
her plays—especially her early work, that tipping point where anger rises from the core of a suffering and op- pressed person and explodes into a pointed and fully articulated rage against that oppression. The beauty is that this unapologetic anger and clarity of voice is given to the black women who are central to her work. By do- ing so, she affirms these women’s humanity and invites audiences to release claustrophobic stereotypes of them. And, as a piece of storytelling, she allows black women to have full agency over their own experience.


- [ ] Roles of Thunder (Enotes) @leo, @arabella

- [ ] Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, Ntozake Shange: Carving a Place for Themselves on the American Stage (Enotes) @leo

- [ ] Black Women Playwrights in American Theatre

- [ ] THE THEATRE AS A SITE OF GENDER-BASED DISCRIMINATION IN ALICE CHILDRESS’ FLORENCE
