SOURCE: "Alice Childress: A Pioneering Spirit," Sage, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring, 1987, pp. 66-8.

In the following excerpt from an interview conducted May 1, 1987, Childress discusses her background and motivation as an author.

Alice Childress, born in 1920 in Charleston, South Carolina, and reared in New York City, is an actress, playwright, novelist, editor, and lecturer. Childress is the only Black American woman whose plays were written and professionally produced over a period of four decades….

Though Childress admits that she is not a "public" person, she graciously talked to me about childhood memories, her writing process, her struggle to carve a place for herself on the American stage, and several high points of her life. The interview took place at the University of Massachusetts on May 1, 1987….

[Brown-Guillory:] Most artists can recall that "significant other" who served as a source of inspiration and who gently prodded them into telling truths about life...