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August Wilson’s Fences

A Reference Guide
Sandra G. Shannon

For August Wilson, the art of writing is inescapably political and personal. Sitting alone with only a notepad,
pen, and one's thoughts or, as he often puts it, “facing one's demons” entails a complex act of self-discovery on
one hand and a profound articulation of the black tradition on the other. Fortunately for those who wish to
study the genius of his plays, August Wilson's art is no secret. Unlike many writers, he apparently has no
qualms about revealing in great detail the genesis of his artistic inspiration as well as the aesthetic and political
nature of his work. Just as willingly and just as frequently, he underscores what he wishes his work to
accomplish; he is a writer with a mission. In countless interviews and public addresses about his plays and his
politics, he continues to painstakingly explain not just the art of his writing, but the politics as well.

But what special course does Wilson follow that allows his dramatic art to flourish rather than self-destruct
under the weight of his polemics? Having been “fired in the kiln of black cultural nationalism,” 1 he is well aware
of the list of short-lived works by his fellow cultural advocates of the 1960s whose poems, plays, and fiction
waned and disappeared exponentially as the “movement” waned and disappeared. He is also quite aware of
sentiments expressed by conservatives such as New Republic critic Robert Brustein, who argues,

Those who believe in art as a political weapon, as a method of empowering the disadvantaged, may serve a
vital social function— but there is a cost. A passionate political purpose occasionally obliges these artists to
sacrifice individual truth for the collective good.… Art at its finest is inclusive, but ideological art is exclusive. 2

Undaunted by the plight of fellow artists of the 1960s and equally unmoved by the ultra-conservative position of
Robert Brustein, Wilson continues to stay the course with his brand of artistic politics or political art. Fences is
part of this trend.

Wilson's formal training in the art of writing plays serves him well as he balances didacticism with his artistry.
In the summer of 1979, his intense experience in a crash course in playwriting at the Eugene O'Neill Theater
Center in Waterford, Connecticut, forced him to discipline and expand his concept of dramatic art. There, he
met seasoned theater professionals who convinced him that clever metaphors and passionate speeches did not
a play make. He learned aspects of timing and logistics of staging, and the realities that actors and actresses
faced in live performances. He discovered, “I have to sort out the questions that pertain to acting—questions
that actors would ask even if they were doing Shakespeare.” 3Fences, written some three years after Wilson's
stint at the O'Neill Center, bears the fruit of this intense experience.

As a performance piece, Fences is, from all indications, the most widely staged of Wilson's plays. In fact, the
text has become a favorite among aspiring actors and actresses during professional auditions. The sheer poetry
and passion embedded in its language and the gut-wrenching emotional scenes allow acting hopefuls to show
off their dramatic range. In act 1, scene 5, for example, Troy's very animated recollections of mysterious credit
arrangements that somehow emerge between him and a furniture retailer has potential to tease out the best in
acting capabilities. For Thespians with similar aspirations for the stage, act 1, scene 3 of Fences is a favorite
script. Here, Troy takes full advantage of the occasion to lecture Cory on the importance of making wise
decisions as a responsible African American man, particularly one who takes seriously his commitment as head
of his household. The moral of Troy's speech at this juncture in the play comes through clearly: When faced
with the dilemma of purchasing a television set or patching a leaky roof, the responsible African American man,
of course, chooses the latter. Similarly, for actresses wishing to tout their performance capabilities, act 2, scene
1 of Fences provides an appropriate scenario. Here, Rose sheds her cocoon of domestic complacency and
transforms into a virtual spitfire as she reaches into the depths of her womanhood to find verbal expression
equivalent to her disgust with Troy.

Much of Wilson's unassuming skill in writing Fences goes into creating an organically sound play that revolves
around a single antiheroic character (Troy) who advances a single theme (responsibility). With this in mind,
then, the strength of the three dramatically suitable scenes above does not simply lie in their potential to tease
out a successful performance. Just as important is how these pivotal moments sustain the theme of
responsibility that permeates the play and that draws even more attention to the fundamentally flawed nature
of Troy's tragic character. Toward this end, the emotional landscape has been carefully cultivated in advance.
When certain characters enter a scene, for example, they bring with them some unresolved controversy. The
emotional baggage that dovetails from one scene to the next, in such instances, sets up an automatic frame of
emotional reference for both audience and characters, often negating the need for verbal transitions. For
example, act 2, scene 4 of Fences opens with Troy's misdeeds being virtually a matter of public record. In the
previous scene, he has confessed his infidelity; he and Rose have sparred; and the rules of their marriage have
been drastically reconfigured. Accounts of his sexual liaison with Alberta have been divulged, including news of
the child the two have conceived. Thus the opening dialogue in this scene and the mood that looms over it are
largely in reaction to what has already immediately transpired. In this manner, then, Wilson solidifies the
organic unity of Fences by dovetailing emotional carryover from one scene to the next and by consistently
embracing the theme of responsibility through its line. As such, the showcase performance quality of Troy's
lessons in responsibility and in Rose's passionate soliloquy further attest to Wilson's concentrated attention to
the art of composing a play—one that is equally effective as a performance piece and as text-based drama.

Timing is also very much of the essence in Fences. Two scenes demonstrate how this aspect of Wilson's art
contributes to the very tightly controlled nature of this work. During what is perhaps one of the most highly
charged scenes in the play, Rose Maxson prepares for an all-out verbal confrontation with her adulterous
husband. He has not only just confessed to his relationship with another woman, but he also multiplies his
marital transgressions by telling his wife of eighteen years that he has impregnated his mistress lover. As if this
is not sufficiently gripping, Wilson prolongs the inevitable fireworks by timing Gabriel's untimely entrance as an
obvious delay tactic that allows audiences to linger on this moment a bit longer. The very pregnant (no pun
intended) silence that Rose interrupts by attempts to spare her brother-in-law from the ugly scene that is about
to erupt temporarily staves off her unbearable anger:

ROSE: Gabe, go on in the house there. I got some watermelon in the frigidaire. Go on and get you a piece …
GABRIEL: Okay, Rose … gonna get me some watermelon. The kind with the stripes on it. (GABRIEL exits into the
house.) (2.1.67)

Once Gabriel clears the scene, Rose holds no punches as she verbally lashes Troy in retaliation for his infidelity.

The art of timing illuminates another tense dramatic moment in Fences. Several days in the wake of Troy's dual
confessions of infidelity and impending fatherhood, he sits alone drinking, wallowing in his blues, and
contemplating the much-altered status of his life. His mistress Alberta has died in childbirth; Rose has
essentially annulled their marriage and has decided to focus her time and energy upon Raynelle and the church;
Gabriel has been committed to an institution; Bono's visits are noticeably less; and Cory detests Troy because
of what he has done to his mother and to him. By all accounts Troy is the epitome of the pariah. Yet at what
seems the nadir of his existence, Cory approaches. Unquestionably, the scene that follows has been carefully
timed:

CORY: I got to get by.

TROY: Say what? What you say? […]
CORY: I ain't scared of you.
TROY: I ain't asked if you was scared of me. I asked you if you was fixing to walk over top of me in my own
house? That's the question. You ain't gonna say excuse me? You just gonna walk over top of me?
CORY: If you wanna put it like that. (2.4.84–5)

This encounter solidifies the dissolution of any remaining paternal ties between father and son. Respect has
been irreversibly eroded. To Cory, Troy is an obstacle. To Troy, Cory is “just another nigger” (2.4.87).

Two other aspects of timing in Fences significantly contribute to the play's artistry. In the tradition of Tennessee
Williams's The Glass Menagerie (1945) and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1949), Fencesis a memory
play. In other words, the narrative sequence of Fences is informed by both the playwright's remembered past
and the recollections of the play's troubled protagonist Troy Maxson. The play proper spans eight years, yet
when considering the extent to which memory informs Fences, its time frame increases to an additional six
decades. As such, the play's larger narrative essentially begins with Reconstruction in United States history
(1865–1915) and spans to the dawn of the civil rights era (1965).

Fences is strategically and pivotally situated in the 1950s—a decade that in retrospect, teeters on the brink of
monumental civil rights legislation and a general improvement in the circumstances for African Americans.
While this postwar play edges toward revolutionary change on the eve of the civil rights movement, its fifty-
three-year-old protagonist can still recall his experiences as a sharecropper's son. Indeed, the play is
deliberately situated in a time that invites both nostalgia and regret over the past and, at the same time,
promises positive change.

From a structuralist perspective, Wilson's deliberate manipulation of time through the window of Troy's memory
generates meaning. More than a matter of juxtaposing past, present, and future as signalled by three
generations of Maxson men, Fences, as argued by Gunilla Kester and Harry Elam, invites dialectic discussions
that underscore the profound impact that the past has on the present. Both view Troy's past as one that
extends beyond the physical borders of the United States and that taps into an atavistic ancestral memory
grounded in Africa. Kester writes,

On the one hand, in contrast to a temporal sense of return, the spatialization of history strongly suggests that
the distance as well as the need to approach Africa is equally vital for each new generation of African
Americans. On the other, it contains a warning that, to become a dynamo of change, each such approach must
involve a fresh revision of the metaphoric relationship between the black body and its history. 4

Like Kester, Elam sees new meaning in the retrieval of history through memory in Fences. And, like Kester,
Elam sees Africa as Troy's most dominant lieux de memoire (place of memory):

While not unique, what is significant about Wilson's spatialization of time is its trajectory backwards into history.
The journey points toward Africa and joins for me with the West African concept of “Sankofa” in providing
insight into the presence of the past in Wilson's work. In Swahili the term “Sankofa”—symbolized by the
Sankofa bird, who as legend goes flies forward with his head turned backwards—means that one must
understand the past in order to move present into the future. 5

Wilson's compression of time in Fences allows history to become a much more obvious factor in determining the
future. That is, by foregrounding mistakes as well as best practices from the past, Troy is able to make positive
use of history to shape a better future.

Fences is simultaneously informed by Wilson's remembered past as well as a collective African American past to
which he automatically lays claim as a member of this community. At the same time, Fences hinges upon vivid
recollections of its protagonist, images of a past brought more clearly into focus through the lens of his
memory. These experiences, which emerge in the form of nostalgia or nightmarish recollections, have much to
do with Troy's philosophy on life and his general circumstances. Although Wilson's memory of his adolescence
does provide a good deal of the framework for Fences, certain characters' remembrances of days gone by
provide additional perspectives on his preoccupation with the past. Wilson allows memory in Fences to extend
beyond his recognized moments from the past to include recollections of the characters he creates.

The definition of art must also acknowledge what goes into the process of its creation: the behind-the-scenes
trials and errors and—as was the case with Fences up until and during its Broadway run—constant revisions.
When one examines the persistent and methodical metamorphosis that the play underwent from a lumbering
three-and-a-half-hour, unfocused script to a sharply polished Pulitzer Prize contender, one gains a renewed
appreciation for the art of creating drama. In her study revealing the idiosyncrasies of Wilson's playwriting
process, Joan Herrington examines the artistry that went into the making of the much-acclaimed definitive
version of Fences. Having had firsthand access to August Wilson and having been allowed to examine
successive drafts of Fences, the onetime dramaturg got a unique glimpse into intricate details of Wilson's art of
revision.

The revision process for Fences hinged upon Wilson's insistence to advance a single theme in the play: the
responsible African American man. The image of an African American man holding a baby in his arms that is
featured in a collage by Romare Bearden (see Continuities 1969) became the catalyst that spurred Wilson to
write against white America's prevailing assumptions that African American men are essentially irresponsible
and ultimately shiftless: “White America pays no attention to the Troy Maxson's in this world. They see niggers
as lazy and shiftless. Well, Troy is a man who is trying to fulfill tremendous responsibility.” 6 This would not be
the first time that Wilson's art was to take its cue from another artistic medium (see also Joe Turner's Come
and Gone and The Piano Lesson). According to Wilson, the reason for his attraction to Bearden's work has much
to do with the African American collagist's ability to capture in the patchwork images of Continuities what the
African American playwright sought to convey in his dramatic text set in the 1950s.
The scenario of this apparently agrarian-inspired landscape evokes images of the Reconstruction era when the
slavelike system of sharecrop-ping turned Wilson's thoughts to the need to deconstruct the die-hard myth of
the irresponsible and ultimately shiftless African American man that proliferated in that society. In pursuit of
this goal, he fashioned each of the characters in Fences to underscore some aspect of the theme of
responsibility. For example, Lyons, Troy's older son from a previous marriage, is antithetical to the notion of
responsibility that Troy preaches throughout the play. Lyons's chief function in the play, then, is that of a foil
character, as his avoidance of work at all cost and his dependency upon his working woman and his working
father for support make Troy into a heroic figure by contrast. This is made quite obvious as his entrances and
exits revolve around securing money from Troy. In fact, the frequency with which Lyons shows up, especially on
Fridays (a.k.a. payday) turns the entire borrowing and lending game into a ritual. It also becomes a win-win
situation for father and son: It gives Troy the opportunity to harp on being responsible and to expose the
obvious shortcomings of his deadbeat son. It gives Lyons easy access to money on a weekly basis. Troy basks
in his ability to hand over $10 of his hard-earned pay, but not without the additional pleasure that comes with
shaming an essentially shameless son. Lyons, who appears to understand that his borrowing satisfies his
father's fetish, gladly cooperates.

Similar energy is expended in focused attempts to foreground the theme of responsibility in the construction of
Rose Maxson. In early drafts of the play, as Herrington points out, Rose “is much more a nagging wife.” 7
However, Wilson did not want this nagging to have any connection to Troy's infidelity. Thus, in subsequent
drafts, he removes much of the nagging and replaces it with tolerance, forgiveness, and understanding—
qualities that clearly surface in her conversation with Cory just before they depart for Troy's funeral: “Your
daddy wanted you to be everything that he wasn't … and at the same time he tried to make you into everything
he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong … but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do
harm” (2.5.97).

While it is Troy on whom the theme of the responsible black man rests, it is Rose on whom Wilson relies to
punctuate it more clearly. For much of the play, her character stands half in the shadows, functioning
exclusively within the domestic realm as Troy's helpmate, his lover, his cook, his center of gravity. As she fulfills
the wifely and the domestic roles that society expects of black women of the 1950s, she fosters a climate
wherein Troy can demonstrate at every opportunity just how responsible he can be. For Troy, reinforcing this
theme becomes one of his favorite Friday night rituals. Handing over his weekly paycheck to Rose for household
expenditures becomes a public ceremony in which he delights: “There it is. Seventy-six dollars and forty-two
cents. You see this, Bono? Now, I ain't gonna get but six of that back” (1.1.19).

The extent of Wilson's art may also be appreciated by examining the roles of supporting characters; that is,
those individuals who at first appear to be marginal to the play, but upon closer examination, prove essential to
its conflict. Although, to a certain extent, each of the characters in Fences is peripheral to Troy, it is perhaps
Raynelle and Alberta who seem most remote. Upon closer examination, however, both play key roles in
highlighting antithetical examples of Troy's concept of responsibility. One causes the dissolution of Troy and
Rose's marriage; the other forces reconciliation—albeit conditional. Alberta affirms Troy's walking blues or his
tendency to stray from regimentation, commitment, and responsibility, and, unlike Rose, she demands nothing
of him—not his loyalty, not his money, not even his time. Never physically appearing in the play and known
only through conversations about her, Alberta becomes merely a manifestation of Troy's own flawed character.
As such, she manages to escape judgment and persecution from both Rose as well as from the audience.

Troy and Alberta's love child Raynelle also plays an unassuming yet pivotal role in Fences. Harry Elam sees her
as “a critical element in his [Wilson's] redemptive strategy” and posits that she “visually represents the
inextricable connection between past and present. Not only is she a manifestation of Troy's past infidelities but
also the signifier of his redemption.” 8 However, at first as an infant and eventually as a child, she demands
from both Rose and Troy an unprecedented degree of soul-searching. Doing so forces them to grapple with
some profound issues involving their humanity. Deciding the child's fate—given the extremely difficult
circumstances surrounding her birth—is perhaps one of the toughest arrangements that Troy and Rose have to
make. Nevertheless both grow noticeably in the wake of their respective decisions to yield up the child to
another woman and raise her husband's illegitimate daughter as her own.

Raynelle is a paradox. Although she is conceived in infidelity by a father who is approaching the waning years of
his life, she represents hope. She offers that redemptive assurance that Wilson vows to impart at the close of
each play that his African American characters are at least pointing in the right direction. This child who never
knew her own biological mother, in turn, fills a maternal void in Rose, and in her childlike innocence, lures her
brother back to the fold. In the midst of death, profound disappointment, and sadness, she unwittingly becomes
an agent of healing. At the close of Fences, the Maxson family is intact and poised for unimaginably positive
changes in their quality of living.

True to his early grounding as a poet, August Wilson conceives of his art in eloquent terms, likening what is for
him a spiritual and deeply personal commitment to finding his song and to walking down an unfamiliar
landscape. But he also sees in his calling a mandate to convey the imprint of black culture and to rewrite the
history of African Americans. When asked to explain this empowering act, he resorts to visionary statements,
such as “to write is to fix language, to get it down and fix it to a spot and have it have meaning and be fat with
substance. It is in many ways a remaking of the self in which all of the parts have been realigned, redistributed,
and reassembled into a new being of sense and harmony” 9 and “I write from the center, the core of myself.
You've got that landscape and you've got to enter it, walk down the road and whatever happens, happens. And
that's the best you're capable of coming to. The characters do it, and in them, I confront myself.” 10 His
compassion is matched by his eloquence.

Wilson's fascination with language—the sound and the sting of his words and the poetry he eventually
discovered in the everyday conversations of black people—is perhaps one of his greatest gifts as a playwright.
Earlier in his developing career, he actually labored to transfer that fascination from his ear to the written page.
However, a fortuitous move to Minnesota in 1978 brought into sharper focus the language he haphazardly
overheard on the streets and in the bars and restaurants of his native Hill District in Pittsburgh. This experience
revealed to him that the conversations of these people, many of whom he had grown up with, were indeed
worthy to be regarded as art. Nevertheless, it took the 1987 runaway success of Fences's predecessor, Ma
Rainey's Black Bottom to convince Wilson that his writing had evolved from the overblown, stilted speech that
characterized his earlier efforts at writing fledgling plays, such as Recycle (1973) and The Coldest Day of the
Year (1976). In what was apparently for Wilson a much-needed dose of confidence, reviewers heaped praise
upon Ma Rainey, pointing to the playwright's exceptional skill at making his characters' speech familiar to the
ears of many. As a result, audiences were more prone to know—and, therefore, understand—the predicaments
of the individual member of Gertrude “Ma” Rainey's all–African American male band.

“Wilson has one of the finest ears for language in American theater. Using characters who speak with rolling,
fluid rhythms, he accurately and purposefully records black speech and life. Fences is full of rich idioms, funny
lines and arresting images.” 11 So writes David Lida in his review of the Broadway premiere of Fences.
Capitalizing upon a newfound confidence that Ma Rainey bestowed upon him, Wilson took his proven skill at
putting words into his characters' mouths to another level.

The sheer artistry of language in Fences is evident on several levels, not just in the playwright's mission to set
Troy Maxson apart from the mundane aspects of his environment. Wilson's carefully choreographed rhetorical,
narrative, and performance maneuvers also call further attention to his mastery of the artistic craft of
composing drama. Chief among the exemplary linguistic devices in Fences are realistic, recognizable markers of
black vernacular. The uncut, unabridged presentation of cultural idioms and other idiosyncrasies peculiar to
verbal communication among African American males during the late 1950s affirms Wilson's carefully trained
ear. Troy and Bono, in particular, have adopted in the manner of their talk rhythmic cadences and tones that
encompass a wide range of emotions from jubilation to despair. As is expected, these men drop all pretense of
decorum in their verbal exchanges, yet even as they do so, they preserve the eloquence and power of their oral
tradition.

The manner in which Wilson manipulates language in Fences to underscore Troy Maxson's humanity, his gusto
for life, and his profound awareness of his own mortality does much to subvert stereotypical notions that might
devalue the garbageman's blue-collar status. The play's protagonist speaks with rich, figurative eloquence even
though his economic status places him clearly below the poverty level. The poet in Wilson transforms Troy into
the common man's bard who fashions protective armor out of his words to ward against various forms of
symbolic emasculation that threaten his humanity. At the same time, Wilson's careful crafting of Troy's many
soliloquies, his retorts, his pontifications, and his blues laments enlarges Troy's character and noticeably
transforms Fences into a clear example of the tragedy of the common man.

Troy Maxson's obvious gift for telling stories is also his uniquely roundabout way of imparting life lessons to his
sons. Still suffering from the leftover psychological effects of slave-master mentality that stifled the emotions of
his father as well as his grandfather, Troy, perhaps unwittingly, adheres to the belief that any show of paternal
warmth might be misconstrued as a flaw in his character. Somewhere also in his blood's memory is the idea
that, in the face of imminent separation, self-preservation mandates a degree of emotional detachment. This
stoic principle extends to both of his sons, whom he deals with essentially at arm's length and on strictly
business terms. If there does exist a bond between Troy and Cory or between Troy and Lyons, it is one that he
has carefully masked and suppressed beneath the exaggerated rhetoric that he has mastered. Somewhere
within this space provided by storytelling, Troy accepts his role as father and tries to counsel his sons in terms
that he knows best. “By teaching family responsibility to his sons through stories,” Anna Blumenthal observes,
“he enacts that responsibility which he teaches.” 12

Never having the benefit of a father to advise him on what being a man entails, Troy is left to his own means of
constructing and becoming what is, in his estimation, the ideal African American man. Troy's version of black
manhood would, understandably, reflect aspects of his own father's cruel indifference. But his construction of
masculinity also bears the battered psyche of one who struck out on his own early from his father's house. Such
an eclectic construct of black manhood must take into account Troy's street savvy as well as his self-righteous
posture on responsibility. The tough lessons he learned from his father while in Alabama, his memories as
husband and father, and his brush with crime while up North and subsequent incarceration shaped him into the
unrelenting, rebellious, assertive, hardworking, sexually liberal, yet very responsible Troy whom we see for
better or for worse in Fences.

So storytelling transcends its traditional role as entertainment in Fences to become a substitute for what might
be, under different circumstances, fatherly advice. According to Blumenthal, “Troy's stories reflect his conscious
narrative art.” 13 While Troy's vivid accounts still cause laughter, capture the imagination, and engage his
toughest critics, they also serve as a means of teaching by example. Blumenthal further asserts that “Wilson's
dramatizing of Troy's struggle enhances our respect for Troy despite his failures in the play because in his
stories, Troy enacts paternal and familial duty by teaching it in his narratives.” 14 For example, the subtext
beneath Troy's shameful recollections of his father's lust for his young girlfriend is a lesson couched in
antithetical examples of fatherhood. Although Troy's understanding of father-son justice prepares him for the
beating he thinks he deserves for neglecting the mule, it does not account for the shocking sexual liberties his
father takes with the terrified girl. In this narrative, Troy communicates through his past experiences that his
father was anything but a role model for him. This narrative also teaches that Troy's character, by contrast, far
outshines that of his Neanderthal father. His decision to leave this environment of tyranny behind him and
never to return speaks to his principles, his knowledge of what constitutes ethical and unethical, and his clear
demarcation between barbarous and civil behavior. He wanted nothing more to do with the man who could rape
his girlfriend just as easily as he could eat a whole chicken and leave his children his leftovers.

The art that characterizes Troy's keen sense for storytelling entails aspects of timing as well as knowledge of his
audience's tolerance level. What gestures or rhetorical strategies might be used in the delivery to enhance
credibility? How far can he stretch the narrative before his listener(s) dismisses it as a hoax? Is it more
important to be heard or to be believed? Apparently Wilson knows the answers to such questions, for Troy is
quite adept at sustaining the attention of his audience and at maintaining a delicate balance between the real
and the supernatural elements: A coworker steals a watermelon and tries to get it past his boss by hiding it
under his coat. Death becomes a wrestling partner when Troy lies sick with pneumonia. A mysterious stranger
shows up at Troy's door and grants him credit to buy furniture. Cory learns why a television is not a responsible
purchase. Old Blue never heeded a command; still he was a “good old dog.” These and other such narrative
jewels are testaments to Troy's oratorical artistry. Of course, Troy's art is a testament to Wilson's art, which, in
his role of playwright, demonstrates his intimate understanding of the psychological and sociological importance
of crafting and relating good stories within the African American community.

Wilson's dramatic art also revolves around opposites: life and death; separation and reunion; incarceration and
emancipation; Christianity and African spiritualism; supernatural and natural. Frequently his audiences will find
themselves laughing uproariously at one moment and, at another, experiencing profound sorrow. In Fences, for
example, humor and tragedy coexist to the extent that the two human conditions actually complement each
other to reflect realistically this man's—and any man's—triumphs and failures. At one point Troy can barely
contain his amusement while recalling a humorously absurd incident from work involving a coworker charged
with stealing a watermelon from his supervisor and attempting to conceal it under his coat. Within this same
context, Troy later bitterly denounces discriminatory conditions on his job. As Qun Wang observes, “Humor is
sometimes created in the blues with the use of ‘comic hyperbole’ … Yet at other times the sardonic tone of the
lines highlights the speaker's tragic sense of life.” 15 Langston Hughes defines this tendency among African
Americans to erase the boundaries between tragedy and humor in The Book of Negro Humor where he writes,
humor is “laughing at what you haven't got when you ought to have it” and humor is “what you wish in your
secret heart were not funny, but it is, and you must laugh.” 16 Humor is the medicine that keeps the tragicomic
dimensions of Troy Maxson's life in their proper perspective.

That Troy and Bono appear to place so much stock in their verbal agility mirrors Wilson's early enlightenment
about the profound beauty and artistry in black vernacular speech. Rich with sparkling metaphors and idiomatic
wisdom, Troy's everyday talk stands to rival any of Shakespeare's carefully arranged lines. In justifying his
attraction to Alberta, for example, he confesses, “But seems like this woman just stuck onto me where I can't
shake her loose” (2.1.63). In issuing increasingly mounting warnings to his son Cory, he fashions a clever
metaphor using the context that he knows best—the game of baseball: “I'm gonna tell you what your mistake
was. See … you swung at the ball and didn't hit it. That's strike one. See, you in the batter's box now. You
swung and you missed. That's strike one. Don't you strike out!” (2.4.58). In both instances, Troy's speech is
immersed in figurative language that opens a window to his thinking and that captures his very particular
emotions. In this fashion Troy can convey the recesses of his blues at one point and just as easily shift to
celebrate a moment of triumph at another.

The calculated nature of Wilson's art in Fences is reflected in the cultural mission he openly expresses for his
decade-by-decade chronicle of the African American experience in the twentieth century: “[T]o actually keep all
of the elements of the culture alive in the work … I purposefully go through and make sure each element of that
is in some way represented—some more so than others in the plays, which I think gives them a fullness and a
completeness—that this is an entire world.” 17 The ease with which African American folkloric expression
permeates Troy Maxson's casual conversations belies such a premeditated approach. In addition to Troy's skill
in the use of figurative imagery, then, folklore also becomes part of his verbal arsenal.

In Fences the function of folklore goes beyond providing local color. Defined as “all of the unwritten traditional
beliefs, legends, sayings, customs, etc. of a culture,” 18 folklore is, for Wilson, a major signifier and key
contextual device. As Trudier Harris points out, “Wilson creates folklore … that is recognizable even in its
surface unfamiliarity.” 19 References to folklore add cultural flavor to Troy's exaggerated narratives, at the core
of which often lie his keen awareness of his weaknesses and his strengths as an African American man in the
1950s. For Troy, the shortest narrative distance for getting at that truth is not a straight line. Rather it is a
meandering, prolonged detour, complete with a loquacious display of verbal agility; he rarely communicates in
strictly literal terms. In such instances, folklore allows Troy to move language from beyond the realm of the
mundane, the commonplace, and the literal to that of the sublime, the fantastical, and the supernatural.

Folklore satisfies Troy's need for hyperbole and allows him to create a mythic world where he reigns supreme.
At the same time, folklore provides the stuff of the blues and enables him to put a finger on the source of his
melancholy. Drawing upon popular concepts about death, for example, that have been handed down from one
generation of African Americans to the next, Troy is able to construct an image of himself as a formidable match
for the Grim Reaper. At the same time, he fashions himself to be the penultimate example of masculinity—the
undaunted, indefatigable warrior. When a three-day bout with pneumonia becomes a near-death experience for
him, Troy refuses to play victim to Death's virtually unstoppable march. Determined to save face, Troy accords
Death a convincing set of human characteristics and proceeds to tout his comparable physical and mental
superiority over the embodied spirit: “Death ain't nothin. I done seen him. Done wrassled with him” (1.1.10),
he tells Rose, who worries that he drinks too much. Once summoned to the realm of the living, Troy's arch foe
engages him in lengthy mortal combat that ends in a standoff. To hear Troy tell it, Death finally yields, grabs
his white robe, and stalks away after promising to give the battle-weary Troy an extension.

What is most intriguing about Troy's account of this harrowing experience is that its acceptance as reality does
not depend upon the extent to which his immediate witnesses in the play suspend disbelief. In fact, neither
Rose nor Bono put much stock in Troy's account of his rendezvous with Death. Rose discredits every aspect of
her husband's story while Bono facetiously writes him off as a relative of Uncle Remus. Still, Troy seems
energized by the apparent adrenaline rush that comes along with his attempt to perform Death into actual
existence. Against the pleas of his wife to desist, he insists upon finishing his story.

Troy must know that Rose and Bono find his often-told story rather irksome, yet he persists out of what seems
to be a self-therapeutic need to vent this particular experience—to remember. Unlike Herald Loomis, the
psychologically and spiritually troubled protagonist of Wilson's Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988) who has
suppressed deep within his subconscious the African experience during the Middle Passage, Troy seems ever-
willing and actually pressed to tell his story to anyone within ear range. Whereas Loomis finds relief only when
Bynum, the resident conjure man, performs the role of spiritual healer and draws these experiences out of him,
Troy needs no such therapy. Although, on the surface, the weight of these two African American men's
experiences may seem incomparable, in actuality Troy's highly rhetorical—and, at times, amusing—performance
deflects attention from issues that are, for him, just as profound and just as troubling as are Loomis's demons.
Troy's much-rehearsed Death narrative, then, may very well be his unique way of grappling with the enormity
of his own mortality while taking care not to jeopardize his cherished warrior image. Beneath the rhetoric and
the posturing is the very conceivable implication that Troy Maxson is actually terrified of Death! The conflict of
Fences insinuates as much. When Bono takes him to task about his selection of wood for Rose's fence, Troy
bristles at even the remotest reference to his passing:

BONO: You don't need this wood [hardwood]. You can put it up with pine wood and it'll stand as long as you
gonna be here looking at it.
TROY: How you know how long I'm gonna be here, nigger? Hell, I might just live forever. Live longer than old
man Horsely. (2.1.61)

Even though, to some extent, Troy performs for himself and becomes his own audience, he also presses his
larger audiences to accept his reality. The extent to which Troy can create a credible image of Death in the
minds of his immediate witnesses and the play's larger audience depends not just upon the garbageman's
eloquence but also upon the credibility of his performance. Thus, to will Death into existence, Troy must bring
all of his acting skills to bear to convince any listener that he has seen, talked to, wrestled with, and been
touched by the Grim Reaper. Using verbal skills that rival the mime's convincing gestures, Troy is able to create
reality through the sheer power of language. So convincing is he that, perhaps for a moment, audiences may
suspend disbelief and accept Troy's exaggerated testimony as reality: “I looked up one day and Death was
marching straight at me. Like Soldiers on Parade! The Army of Death was marching straight at me. The middle
of July, 1941” (1.1.11).

Troy's efforts to will Death into existence via an exceptionally convincing performance also turn our attention to
the role that the playwright plays in asserting this reality. Taking his cue from African American cultural
perspectives on death and dying, Wilson creates a mythic image of Death that asserts its own reality. According
to Trudier Harris,

He [Wilson] does not establish the possibility of the existence of certain phenomena; he simply writes as if they
are givens. We might say that his plays begin “in medias res.” A world exists; Wilson invites viewers into it.
Instead of going to meet the audience by trying to prove belief in supernatural phenomena, Wilson
unapologetically invites the audience to come into his world, to rise to his level of belief. 20

In African American culture, as in most cultures, death is accorded much respect. Its randomness; its
inevitability; its impartiality to wealth, power, race, class, or religion; and its awesome finality have the
potential to humble as no other reality can. In some instances, it occasions mourning within the African
American community, but in others, it has become cause for celebration. Many of the rituals and emotional
responses to death are the by-products of African retention that survived the Middle Passage. As one historian
posits,

Belief in afterlife was integral to traditional African religion. But Africans did not view the future world with fear
nor as a place of dispensations for rewards and punishments in a Christian sense. In this land of the dead,
where life continued, there was no sickness, disease, poverty, or hunger.… Death was a journey into the spirit
world, not a break with life or earthly beings. 21

Clearly African views on death, as expressed here, challenge the very premise of certain popular biblical
concepts promoted by Christianity: the resurrection, Judgment Day, Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates,
Archangel Gabriel, and the belief that upon death, the soul shall either ascend to heaven or be cast down into
the fiery inferno of hell for all eternity.

In her account of the painstaking revisions that went into the making of Fences, Joan Herrington notes that in
earlier versions of the play, Wilson humbled Troy before Jesus. That, of course, implied that Troy was prone to
subordinate his will to that of a higher power and that the ground rules for responsibility were determined by
Christian ethics rather than by Troy's rugged individualism. In an early draft of Fences, when news of Alberta's
death reaches him, Troy “rails at Jesus, asking for salvation in the face of his trials.” 22 Yet in subsequent
revisions, Troy does not even consider Christianity as a source of consolation. In fact, he seems much more
preoccupied by the Devil instead.

It is by Wilson's design, then, that Troy avoids Christian references as he faces a series of devastating news.
Rather than resort to prayers and supplication when Alberta dies, for example, he braces himself in the face of
this tragedy and apostrophizes Death as one would an old acquaintance:

Alright … Mr. Death. See now … I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna take and build me a fence
around what belongs to me. And then I want you to stay on the other side. See? You stay over there until
you're ready for me. Then you come on. Bring your army. Bring your sickle. Bring your wrestling clothes. I ain't
gonna fall down on my vigilance this time. You ain't gonna sneak up on me no more. When you ready for me …
when the top of your list say Troy Maxson … that's when you come around here. (2.2.77)

Interestingly, Troy's very personalized way of negotiating the profundity of death is informed not so much by
concerns about the afterlife where his circumstances may be improved. Instead, he adopts a perspective that
seems antithetical to Christian and Africanist concepts, both of which regard death as a sequel rather than as a
final chapter. In retrospect, however, Wilson determined that any suggestion that it is God who determines
Troy's destiny must be eradicated, for this would weaken the play's emphasis upon its central theme of
responsibility. The art behind his efforts at this point was directed toward making Troy the master of his fate
and the captain of his soul.

Ironically Troy draws his strength by constructing death as a worthy opponent in battle. Such regard is but an
extension of his heightened estimation of himself as one part warrior, one part bluesman. That is, he fears no
one and no thing. He conceives of death as a game of chance, much like baseball where the victor is
determined not by the circumstances of his birth but by sheer stamina and skill. When Troy likens death to “a
fast ball on the outside corner,” then, he interprets it by using terms that he understands. This is a context in
which winning or losing simply depends upon one's ability to get a chance at bat.

Troy stands in awe of death's finality to the extent that he spends a significant amount of time positioning
himself, both mentally and physically, for its inevitable arrival. Much as one would spar before an actual match,
Troy practices swinging his bat at a ball of rags that hangs from his tree. This ritual, together with Troy's
imaginative embodiment of Death, eases his anxiety about the unknown and lets him at least pretend to have
some control over his fate. To Troy, outwitting Death or making contact with that rag ball becomes ultimate
tests of his masculinity. Still, Troy's triumph is his ability to resist, to engage in battle, and to fight the good
fight. “He was out there swinging that bat,” Rose reveals. “I was just ready to go back in the house. He swung
that bat and then he just fell over. Seem like he swung it and stood there with this grin on his face … and then
he just fell over” (2.5.95–6).

Just as Death is the source of a rich vein of African American folklore, images of endeared animals and ominous
humans are also the focus of popular lore. In Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, for example,
Matt Bonner's yellow mule became the focus of numerous store-front conversations of townspeople. So popular
was this equestrian-focused pastime, that the skilled group of “mule-talkers,” 23 as they were called, created a
body of folklore that raised Bonner's animal to heroic status. The nature of such folklore often begins in
competitive verbal jousting about some unassuming, familiar creature and, over time, evolves into myth and
legend. What begins as a simple farm animal in Their Eyes Were Watching God turns into the protagonist of
many a trickster tale and the brunt of numerous jokes.

In Fences, Troy accords his trusted dog Blue with similar heroic status. Whereas Matt Bonner's mule becomes a
catalyst for collective humor, Blue's revered memory provides balm for one man's pain. The folklore that takes
shape around animal subjects functions in a variety of ways, confirming Henry Louis Gates and Nellie McKay's
assertion that “African Americans hammered these myriad tales into unmistakably black American shapes and
themes. The voices of the stories … marked them as African American. So did the particular turns of the plot as
well as the particular heroes, dupes, and villains, and their values.” 24

During several of Troy's blues moments, when he pauses long enough to contemplate his tragic plight, he
lovingly evokes the memory of a canine companion name Blue. Doing so apparently fills up the gaping space
around him left vacant by his now deeply disappointed family members and friend. Six months after he delivers
a double blow to his wife, he sits alone on the steps to his home. Noticeably, he does not demonstrate his
profound sense of alienation by moaning or crying. Instead, he breaks into song about “a good old dog” named
Blue.

Here it ring! Hear it ring!

I had a dog his name was Blue.…
You know Blue was mighty true.…
You know Blue was a good old dog.…
Blue treed a possum in a hollow log

(1.4.44)
Apparently by invoking Blue's memory in song, Troy is able to grapple with the nadir of his emotions.
Apparently dead for some time (or more likely romanticized as such), Blue is resurrected in the lyrics of an
often-chanted song, the substance of which Troy respectfully credits to his father.

In Troy's resurrection of Blue, one gets a glimpse into the genesis and psychology of folklore. One is also able
to appreciate Wilson's regard for and skill at capturing nuances of the African American oral tradition in his
work. Wilson blends a mixture of verisimilitude and hyperbole in his representation of Blue in an effort to
approximate the highly figurative nature of African American oral lore. Just as in his construction of Death as
Troy's mortal foe or in the construction of the furniture creditor as an ominous visitor, complete suspension of
disbelief is inconsequential. Likewise, the effectiveness of Troy's stories about Death, the dog, or the furniture
creditor may not rest solely upon whether he actually wrestled with Death, owned a dog named Blue, or
encountered a foreboding stranger. Nor is it of consequence that those listening to him give any credence to
these claims. What is more important, however, is the skill of the narrator in teasing his listeners to at least
accept some part of his constructions as conceivable and to, in fact, listen to him long enough for him to put his
storytelling skills to the test. Success in the eyes of the narrator (i.e., Troy) can be measured in terms of the
amount of time an audience finds him engaging before dismissing him and his tale as bogus. Even if this is the
case, the storyteller in him still enjoys a measure of success in honing his art. Anna Blumenthal underscores
this argument in her essay that explores the art that underlies Troy's stories and Wilson's considerable skill in
converting this oral medium to the stage. She asserts, “Troy shapes his narratives with his audience clearly in
mind, and his skill is such that he is able to hold his listeners' interest even with extended stories, whether they
are built from his past experience or from imagined material.” 25

The art of Wilson's words in Fences extends beyond Troy Maxson's frequent figurative allusions to the
potentially volatile use of the word “nigger.” Much discussion continues to generate around this potentially
explosive term, yet Wilson appears less concerned about the word's political correctness than he is about its
effectiveness in capturing the verisimilitude of his characters' speech. As was certainly the case during his early
years in Pittsburgh, the term was commonplace on the streets in the inner-city urban area where he grew up as
well as in its bars, restaurants, and other gathering places that he frequented. Randall Kennedy, Harvard
University law professor and author of Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2002), posits some
interesting observations about the legacy of this word and the unwavering stigma associated with its continued
use. He notes that the word “nigger” “has been the most socially destructive racial epithet in the American
language.” 26 Nevertheless, audiences who attend performances of Fences, or any of Wilson's plays, for that
matter, are regularly peppered by the word “nigger”—so much so that they are either mildly irritated or
completely appalled by it or else they eventually concede to the communal bond it affirms.

One must note that the utterance of the word “nigger” during a live performance—whether in Fences or in any
of Wilson's other plays—has an impact that is significantly different from meaning gained by reading it on the
page. Other contributing factors that determine whether the word agitates or simply communicates in a live
performance are race, class, and gender demographics of the audience. As one might imagine, the most
uncomfortable reception of “nigger” might conceivably come from the demographically mixed group. Surely the
label “nigger,” when released by the roaring, angry voice of a man denied his dream, has the potential to
reverberate throughout the theater space, giving a clearer indication of the pain and suffering that Troy feels
yet perhaps still causing discomfort among those who agree with Langston Hughes's contention that

[t]he word nigger to colored people of high and low degree is like a red rag to a bull. Used rightly or wrongly,
ironically or seriously, of necessity for the sake of realism, or impishly for the sake of comedy, it doesn't matter.
Negroes do not like it in any book or play whatsoever, be the book or play ever so sympathetic in its treatment
of the basic problems of the race. Even though the book or play is written by a Negro, they still do not like it.
The word nigger, you see, sums up for us who are colored all the bitter years of insult and struggle in America.
27

In his Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (1970), Clarence Major explains the emotional bond between African
American males that is signaled by the word “nigger.” He posits that when the term is bantered about during
black-on-black conversations, it becomes “a racial term with undertones of warmth and goodwill—reflecting,
aside from irony, a tragicomic sensibility that is aware of black history.” 28 Within the context of Fences, where
the dialogue is, for the most part, driven by African American males who are inclined to speak more openly
outside the gaze of white hegemony, the term “nigger” is far from being a racial slur. On the contrary, the
prevalence of this label underscores the existence of a magic circle or special brotherhood who, by virtue of
their shared experiences as black men in America, find it necessary to adopt a privileged, specialized language.
That language affords a safe place from which they may speak to power and affirm their masculinity. That
language also provides space to get in touch with their sensitive nature without sacrificing what makes them
men. When Troy confides in Bono—his friend for much of his life—the word “nigger” is clearly a term of
endearment and even more so an acknowledgment of a fraternal closeness spawned by years of shared
experiences—both good and bad:

Bono like family. I done known this nigger since … how long I done know you? … I done known this nigger since
Skippy was a pup. Me and him done been through some times.… Hell, I done know him longer than I known
you [to Rose]. And we still standing shoulder to shoulder. Hey, look here, Bono … a man can't ask for no more
than that … I love you, nigger.” (1.4.57)

Kennedy endorses the fraternal bond that “nigger” may highlight among African American men, but he
emphasizes that these closed circles of men do not completely divorce its meaning from its racist history:
“Some blacks, for instance, use ‘nigger’ among themselves as a term of endearment. But that is typically done
with a sense of irony that is predicated upon an understanding of the term's racist origins and a close
relationship with the person to whom the term is uttered.” 29

But the magic circle suggested by “nigger” is but one facet of its slippery nature in Fences. Although “nigger”
easily rolls off the tongues of Troy and Bono during moments of nostalgia and alcohol-enhanced banter, the
term just as easily signals for members of this inner circle sudden imposed exile and disinheritance. The magic
space that at one point in Fences affords an unqualified license to use the term “nigger” safely suddenly shifts
its course and turns this same word into a preface to a curse. When Cory forgets to add “sir” to “Yeah” to make
“Yes, sir,” Troy quickly chides him: “Nigger, as long as you in my house, you put that sir on the end of it when
you talk to me” (1.3.37). In yet another instance, Troy applies the term “nigger” to Cory to further underscore
their irreconcilable differences. Immediately after a very melodramatic moment in the play during which Troy
and Bono confess platonic love for each other, Cory comes home fully dressed in football gear. Seeing his son in
uniform triggers in Troy immediate disgust at Cory's decision to sacrifice his job at the local A&P in order to play
football.

It is interesting to note that mere moments lapse between the scene where Troy uses “nigger” to express the
bond that has persisted over the years between Bono and him and the scene where he registers absolute
disapproval of Cory's decision to play ball against his iron rule: “The boy lied to me,” he tells Rose. “I told the
nigger if he wanna play football … to keep up his chores and hold down that job at the A&P” (1.4.57). Later, as
emotions run high, a climactic confrontation between Cory and his father ensues in the Maxson family's front
yard. After several rounds of verbal sparring with Cory, Troy summons all the fury and hatred contained in the
word “nigger” to mark a complete denunciation of his adolescent son: “Nigger! That's what you are. You just
another nigger on the street to me!” (2.4.87).

Politics aside, the rough edge of Troy's booming voice as he enunciates “nigger” offers an extension of his
character, a more appropriate measure of his passion and frustration in a white-controlled scheme of things.
Whether used to punctuate his anger, to address a lifelong friend, to dress down a belligerent son, or to
jealously rail against token black ballplayers who broke through the color line in major-league baseball before
him, the term “nigger” is an important item in Troy's vocabulary.

Fences is the product of August Wilson's mission to prove to himself and to his critics that he could write a
better play. Fences was also part of his larger political agenda where it is one of a proposed ten-link, decade-
by-decade chain of historical narratives about African Americans in the twentieth century. Despite such tall
orders, Wilson accepted the challenge, although in the early 1980s when he began writing Fences, he was still
somewhat of a novice at writing plays for a larger audience and had not quite mastered the art. His
understanding of the inner workings of the play was basic: “I'm not sure of all of the rules,” he told an
interviewer, “but you just intuitively find your way through to the ending.” 30 Not only did Wilson find his way
through to the ending of Fences, but also along the way, he did not become a slave to conventions or rules.
Although this Pulitzer Prize–winning work does adhere to recognizable aspects of Western drama, it also bears
the unmistakable stamp of Wilson's creative intuition, which frequently operates outside the box of Aristotelian
laws about drama and favors Africa as a more culturally appropriate source of inspiration. To his credit, Fences
represents a marriage of his art, his politics, his life, and his vision for depicting truthfully African American
culture.

NOTES

1. August Wilson, preface to August Wilson: Three Plays (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1991), ix.
2. Robert Brustein, “On Cultural Power,” The New Republic, 3 March 1997, 31.

3. William Kowinski, “The Play Looks Good on Paper—But Will It Fly?” Smithsonian, March 1992, 83–84.

4. Gunilla Theander Kester, “Approaches to Africa: The Poetics of Memory and the Body in Two August Wilson Plays,” in
August Wilson: A Casebook, ed. Marilyn Elkins (New York: Garland, 1994), 106.

5. Harry Elam, (W)righting History: The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (forthcoming).

6. August Wilson, interview by Joan Herrington, February 1994, in I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done: August Wilson's Process of
Playwriting (New York: Limelight, 1998), 64.

7. Ibid., 72.

8. Harry Elam, “August Wilson,” in African American Writers, 2d ed., vol. 2, ed. Valerie Smith (New York: Scribner's, 2001),
847.

9. Ibid., viii.

10. Kim Powers, “An Interview with August Wilson,” Theater Journal 16 (fall/winter 1984): 55.

11. David Lida, review of Fences, by August Wilson, in Women's Wear Daily, 27 March 1987, 8.

12. Anna S. Blumenthal, “More Stories than the Devil Got Sinners: Troy's Stories in August Wilson's Fences,” American Drama
9 (spring 2000): 90.

13. Ibid., 78.

14. Ibid., 80.

15. Qun Wang, “Towards the Poetization of the ‘Field of Manners,’” African American Review 29 (winter 1995): 607–8.

16. Langston Hughes, The Book of Negro Humor (New York: Dodd, 1966), vii.

17. Sandra Shannon, The Dramatic Vision of August Wilson (Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1995), 202–3.

18. “Folklore,” Webster's New World College Dictionary, 3d ed., ed. Victoria Neufeldt (New York: Macmillan, 1997).

19. Trudier Harris, “August Wilson's Folk Traditions,” in August Wilson: A Casebook, ed. Marilyn Elkins (New York: Garland,
1994), 50.

20. Ibid., 51.

21. Margaret Washington Creel, “Gullah Attitudes toward Life and Death,” in Africanism in America, ed. Joseph E. Holloway
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 81.

22. Joan Herrington, I Ain't Sorry for Nothin' I Done: August Wilson's Process of Playwriting (New York: Limelight, 1998), 74.

23. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (Chicago: Illinois University Press, 1978), 81.

24. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, ed. Henry Louis Gates and Nellie Y. McKay (New York: Norton,
1997), 102.

25. Blumenthal, “More Stories than the Devil Got Sinners,” 78.

26. Randall Kennedy, Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (New York: Pantheon, 2002), 30.

27. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea (New York: Knopf, 1940), 268–9.
28. Clarence Major, Dictionary of Afro-American Slang (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 85.

29. Randall Kennedy, “A Note on the Word ‘Nigger,’” Toward Racial Equality: Harper's Weekly Reports on Black America:
1857–1874, 1. http://harpweek.com. HarpWeek, LLC, 1999–2000.

30. August Wilson, “The Historical Perspective: An Interview with August Wilson,” interview by Richard Pettingill, in August
Wilson: A Casebook, ed. Marilyn Elkins (New York: Garland, 1994), 222.

CITATION

August Wilson’s Fences -- : A Reference Guide

MLA
"Art." August Wilson’s Fences : A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. The African American Experience.
Greenwood Publishing Group. 20 Feb 2013. <http://testaae.greenwood.com/doc.aspx?fileID=GR1880&chapterID=GR1880-
656&path=books/greenwood>

Chicago Manual of Style

"Art." In August Wilson’s Fences : A Reference Guide, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003. The African American
Experience. Greenwood Publishing Group. http://testaae.greenwood.com/doc.aspx?fileID=GR1880&chapterID=GR1880-
656&path=books/greenwood. (accessed February 20, 2013).
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