Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Essay | Critical Essay #2

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Critical Essay #2

In the following essay, Elam studies how Wilson uses blues music to treat themes related to the African-American experience in  Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.

Somewhere along the way it dawned on me that I
was writing one play for each decade.Once I became
conscious of that, I realized I was trying to focus on
what I felt were the important issues confronting
Black Americans for that decade, so ultimately they
could stand as a record of Black experience over the
past hundred years presented in the form of dramatic
literature. What you end up with is a kind of review, or
reexamination of history . . . The importance of history
to me is simply to find out who you are and where
you've been. It becomes doubly important if someone
else has been writing your history. I...
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