Refusing to confine her brilliant, probing, ever-curious mind to the cultural ghetto of emotional protest against black social conditions (though never denying the necessity and usefulness of such protest), she depicted a Greenwich Village Jewish intellectual in the full complexity of his personality and cultural knowledge, allowing him to refer pointedly and accurately to
Walden,
Lord of the Flies,
Rashomon, and other works unknown to many in her audience. In spite of its difficulty, it should be considered a major work for its fascinating characters, witty dialogue, and superb portrayal of the social and intellectual currents of its time. That she never intended to overlook black concerns is shown by her third major drama,
Les Blancs (produced in 1970), which painfully and forcefully set forth the African struggle against European colonialism, and her fine television script,
The Drinking Gourd (1972), which stingingly, yet objectively, analyzed how the system of slavery made the Civil War necessary.
Her last published play, What Use Are Flowers? (1972), revealed again the range of her awareness since it dealt with the meaning of civilization in the context of its capacity for self-destruction through nuclear warfare.
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