Weekly Recap June 6-June 12 2021


Fellow readers, today was a week of plays! I read four books this week, and three of them were scripts. The last one was a book of essays that I really enjoyed. Since I spent this week travelling, the fast pace of the stories helped me stay busy:



The Strong Breed by Wole Soyinka

Pursued by his in-laws, an outsider relives the events that led him to abandon his Yoruba community and become the scapegoat for a foreign village. The plot is genuinely thrilling, but I wish Soyinka had lingered a little longer on the pathos of his female characters, who perpetuate (or fail to prevent) the bloody climax of the play.


“EMAN: A man must go on his own, where no one can help him, and test his strength. Because he may find himself one day sitting alone in a wall round such as that. In there, my mind could hold no other thought. I may never have such moments again to myself. Don’t dare come to steal any more of it” (591)



Roosters by Milcha Sanchez Scott

A Hispanic-American family is (almost) severed by a father-son dispute over a fighting cock. The dialogue is quite literally fantastic, and I promise the serious familial tone is not disrupted by the chicken costumes.


“GALLO: Lord Eagle, Lord Hawk, sainted ones, spirits and winds, Santa María Aurora of the Dawn…I want no resentment, I want no rancor…I had an old red Cuban hen” (506)



Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom by August Wilson

In a 1920s Chicago recording studio, black musicians and white managers come into conflict over race, love and the foolishness (or wisdom) of mankind. August Wilson has a fantastic gift for backstory which gives every word his characters utter the weight and malleability of gold.

 

“MA RAINEY: They don’t care nothing about me, All they want is my voice…As soon as they get my voice down on them recording machines, then it’s just like if I’d be some whore and they roll over and put their pants on. Ain’t got no use for me then.” (489)



Schubert’s Vienna by Raymond Erickson

A series of essays describing the political, social and cultural influences in Vienna during the life of 19th-century composer Franz Schubert. While a few essays are less-than-thorough, this book offers a well-crafted window into the daily life of the ordinary people who craft extraordinary art.


“It was in [the middle-class] milieu, and for this population, that much of Schubert’s music arose. His was not the locus for grand opera or court performances or oratorios. Rather, here music sounded in coffeehouses, taverns, restaurants, smaller theaters, apartments and in other like locales...where new dwellings had their pianoforte, their sheet music and their violins” (169-171)


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