After August: Blues, August Wilson, and American Drama

Critics have long suggested that August Wilson, who called blues "the best literature we have as black Americans," appropriated blues music for his plays. After August insists instead that Wilson’s work is direct blues expression. Patrick Maley argues that Wilson was not a dramatist importing blues music into his plays; he was a bluesman, expressing a blues ethos through drama.

Reading Wilson’s American Century Cycle alongside the cultural history of blues music, as well as Wilson’s less dis...