The Power of Place

Playwright August Wilson is best known for his American Century Cycle, a sequence of ten plays—including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Fences and The Piano Lesson—that chronicle the lives of Black Americans in each decade of the twentieth century. But behind the celebrated plays stands a complex man shaped by his hometown’s vibrant Black culture. In The Power of Place, Laurence Glasco, one of the foremost historians of Black life in Pittsburgh, draws on Wilson’s early poetry, archival material, and original interviews with family members, neighbours, and friends to show how the city and its residents shaped the playwright and his work. Wilson’s overlapping identities as an outsider, warrior, race man, and poet helped him persevere in the face of setbacks, weave real-life observations with his poetry to craft memorable dialogue and compelling characters, and portray the realities of race in America in ways that have resonated with theatregoers and readers ever since. Although Wilson eventually left his hometown, the people and places of Pittsburgh remained with him, shining through in a body of work that brought the struggles and triumphs of the Black experience to a wide audience and changed American theatre for the better.