SOURCE: "Images of Blacks in Plays by Black Women," Phylon, Vol. XLVII, No. 3, September, 1986, pp. 230-37.

In the following essay, Brown-Guillory discusses the stages of Tommy's development in Wine in the Wilderness.

Alice Childress, born in 1920 in Charleston, South Carolina and reared in New York City, is an actress, playwright, novelist, editor, and lecturer. Claiming her grandmother, the Bible, Shakespeare, and Paul Laurence Dunbar as principal influences, Childress developed into an exceptional playwright. However, few are aware of the immense contributions that she has made to black playwriting in America in her 36 years of writing for the American stage. Consequently, the aim of this [essay] is twofold: (a) to demonstrate that Alice Childress, a black woman who has struggled against powerful odds to survive in the theatre, has made monumental contributions to black women's playwriting in America, and (b) to illustrate that Childress' heroine in Wine in the...