Book of Anger: A Suite in Five Voices

Product Description


The feminist scholar Kate Millet wrote that women are hungry to have their unspoken voices heard and to finally know the stories of their sisters and mothers throughout time. Author J. M. Wilson has sought out the sound of that voice, the Voice of a Woman, and in her groundbreaking play Book of Anger she feeds that hunger of women around the world to listen and be heard.

 

In Book of Anger, true artist of women's theater, storytelling and poetic prose, J .M. Wilson delivers an uncompromising view of the abuses and survival of females from childhood to womanhood. The shocking reality of the social casting of women as victims is challenged by her tales of women's inherent spiritual valor. Not merely a histrionic harangue, but a seductive melody of hope, Book of Anger tells the story of deliverance from the futile hopelessness of the victim to the passionate living woman who rises unconquered despite the attempted murder of her soul. In the tradition of Ntozake Shange's, "For Colored Girls ...."  J.M. Wilson has created a landmark piece of poetry in the round.

 

The craft and power of Book of Anger affirms the belief that there is still an audience for brutally realistic fiction as opposed to the manufactured products of "reality" that we are inundated with today. For Wilson makes it clear that, in the words of noted playwright Anna Deavere Smith, these stories, "are not offered as truths but as fictions that attempt to tell other truths, the kinds of truths that live in fiction and in the imaginary worlds."

 

Book of Anger
fiercely questions bigotry based on color, race, sexuality, and gender, in extraordinarily evocative language and imagery to repay the reader and viewer's attention. This latest edition of Wilson's play features an introduction by award winning poet and Women's historian, Patricia Monaghan (acclaimed author of Goddesses and Heroines and The Red Haired Girl From The Bog)making Book of Anger a work not to be missed.


From the Author


Excerpted From: Afterword
Feminist scholar Kate Millet wrote that we as women are all hungry to have our unspoken voices heard and to finally know the stories of our sisters and mothers throughout time.
Book of Anger
is one of my earliest attempts at trying to feed that hunger. Respectfully and lovingly taking up the mantle passed down for generations by wise women and accomplished scholars: Zora Neale Hurston, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, and Anna Deavere Smith, I recalled the stories of women past and present in the hopes of allowing that voice to be heard.

 

I would like to express deepest thanks to the artists in my life: Michelle Harvath, Patricia Monaghan, Molia Dumbleton, Consuela Stephens, and Liam Cusack for their encouragement and insistence that despite the text's age there was still an audience for brutally realistic fiction as opposed to the manufactured products of "reality" that we are inundated with today. Despite the personal realism of the text, this work was created not so much to disguise my individual experiences but to expose those universal experiences shared among women. Perhaps better expressed by Anna Deavere Smith, these stories "are not offered as truths but as fictions that attempt to tell other truths, the kinds of truths that live in fiction and in the imaginary worlds."



As a devotee of the oral tradition, Book of Anger was originally a collection of poems and monologues composed with the aspiration of giving the actresses in my community something more authentic and honest to use in their auditions. In addition to being read, these words were meant to be spoken and heard. If one person reads or recites any part of this work aloud to another, I will have succeeded in my task. I invite you to do so and do so often, not only with my work, but with the works of all the women mentioned herein. I encourage you to join me in my search for that Woman's Voice. It is my sincere hope that all who